


unstoppable force, immovable fathers

by godbinder



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Adoption, Arranged Marriage, Canon-Typical Violence, Competency Kink, Crack Treated Seriously, Demisexual Din Djarin, Except It's Not Convenient, Fluff and Angst, Found Family, Jedi Culture & Tradition (Star Wars), M/M, Mandalorian Culture (Star Wars), Marriage of Convenience, Mutual Pining, Rated E for Eventually, Slow Burn, Strangers to Friends to Lovers, The Force Ships It (Star Wars), because feelings, canon is fake except for the parts that I like, no beta we die like troopers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:00:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 40,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28470516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/godbinder/pseuds/godbinder
Summary: “I just need a refuel,” Luke tells the droids, carefully throwing his legs over the edge of the cockpit to slide to the ground. Grogu coos softly, his hands opening and closing his three fingers.“Not a problem, we’ll have you—ready to go...” She trails off when she gets a look at the child, who begins babbling. The Force moves around her in happiness then surprise, shock, then something akin to anger sparking faster than a thermal detonator. Before he can open his mouth, in a move that would have left Han impressed, she has a blaster in hand and shot him in the face.
Relationships: Din Djarin/Luke Skywalker
Comments: 640
Kudos: 2134
Collections: WIPs I’ll Wait Patiently For





	1. hangar 3-5

**Author's Note:**

> I don't even go here but I fucking love this ship and all its potential, so please enjoy this currently incomplete gift. I had this idea and it made me laugh so, here we are.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It had been going so well, Luke thought, which meant this was probably the inevitable turn of events.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Moff Gideon's lightcruiser was in Outer Rim space, which means I can put it in any space I want in the Outer Rim and I want it on the far side of Tatooine from Yavin. I will not be taking questions at this time.

Luke lands on the dusty pad for refueling and slid open the canopy to the hot unforgiving air of Tatooine. The beeps and squeaks of droids were already scuttling around below him as a curly haired woman comes out of the office. 

“I just need a refuel,” Luke tells the droids, carefully throwing his legs over the edge of the cockpit to slide to the ground. Grogu coos softly, his hands opening and closing his three fingers. “I’ll only be about an hour.” Should give him time to feed the little one, if the cantina was still in business where he remembered it. 

“Not a problem, we’ll have you—ready to go...” She trails off when she gets a look at the child, who begins babbling. The Force moves around her in happiness then surprise, shock, then something akin to anger sparking faster than a thermal detonator. Before he can open his mouth, in a move that would have left Han impressed, she has a blaster in hand and shot him in the face. 

\------

He comes to sitting upright in the shade of the overhang. The moment his head comes up, the headache from the stun throbbing from his temples through his skull, droids spring to life in a piercing flail.

Grogu is sitting on the ground in front of him, harassing a beetle that manages to outrun his small fingers, Artoo watching him. 

“You awake?” A small shoe kicks lightly at his ankle, which is also the same moment he realizes his arms are winched behind him. A bolt runs through his metal wrist, deadening it. “Your R-unit has quite a mouth on it.” 

Sith hells. “What has it told you?”

“Nothing that answers my questions.” She squats down in front of him, blaster pointed steadily. He’s more nervous that the move puts Grogu out of his sight than her posturing. He takes a deep breath and reaches out with the Force. He’s winched to a machine, and he doesn’t know which of the buttons along the far side would open the press and which could crush him. Better not to risk it. Grogu is a golden warmth fumbling across the landing pad, clearly unconcerned with what’s happening. He has memories here, soft and gentle memories, unlike the dark ones that void the time between the Jedi Temple and the Mandalorian. 

“Your ship doesn’t ping New Republic, your last landing was on an Imperial lightcruiser, and your droid couldn’t call Mando. I couldn’t reach Mando.” 

The Force trembles around her at the words, before Grogu appears at her knee, his tiny hands patting her leg and asking for up. She runs a hand over his head, but doesn’t pick him up, her gaze doesn’t waver.

“Where’s Mando?”

It takes Luke a second to put it together, he blames it on the vertigo. “The Mandalorian?” He looks at Grogu, whose head tips sideways. “With silver beskar? I’m not sure? We left him on the ship.” 

He looked at the blaster again, which was a mistake because this woman was clearly not stupid. She didn’t say another word, didn’t wait for him to make a move, she just shot him again. 

\------

The next time Luke wakes his head is splitting a fault line between his eyes and the sharp lines of the Mandalorian’s chrome face are a foot in front of him.

“I’m impressed.” 

“What?” Luke coughs on the word, his throat dry. Nothing he has done since leaving the lightcruiser has been impressive, and Han is going to laugh himself under the table when this story finally gets around. It had been going so well, Luke thought, which meant this was probably the inevitable turn of events. 

Then he realizes—the Mandalorian is here. Here, on Tatooine, rescuing him from a curly mechanic. The man whose love for his adopted charge radiated off him in waves, who Grogu had shared memory after memory of, each one impossibly heroic and loyal and true—he was here, a knight in shining armor, and Luke was on the floor covered in sand. 

“Not you,” the Mandalorian says, almost reassuring, maybe, but Luke can’t read the vocoder for tone. He presses a tin cup of water to Luke’s mouth, and the metallic taste is cool and clean down his throat. Luke takes the cup, the restraining bolt apparently removed, but his other wrist is a hostage between the Mandalorian’s fingers. 

“It wasn’t much, I just hit him with a stunner when the droids said he was waking up. Didn’t know he was some Jedi.” She has the little one on her hip, and he has a fistful of her hair in his mouth. The deeply unimpressed look reminds him of Leia, and he’s not sure if it’s directed at him or the Mandalorian or both. “You just let some Jedi walk off with your son?”

Artoo takes offense to that, Luke can hear a cacophony of beeps out of his sight. 

The Mandalorian made a short “Hm,” before he let go of Luke’s wrist. “Your heart’s fine, I think.”

“I’m fine. I just wasn’t expecting it,” Luke said, rubbing the lingering thrill of bare fingerprints from his skin and watches the Mandalorian tug his glove back on. The mechanics whir in his robotic hand, but nothing feels out of alignment. Luke takes the offered hand and lets himself be pulled to his feet. The world spun gently, he was sweaty and gross and the Mandalorian looked spotless. His life was so unfair.

Artoo rolled over and gently bumped his leg, which Luke’s loose relationship with balance did not appreciate. He set a hand on his dome to steady himself. “I’m okay, buddy,” he says. 

“So you can only protect him when you’re expecting it?” 

“What? No!” Luke takes a step forward, looking at the helmet where he thought his eyes were. “No, of course not—“

“Just not this time.” The tip of his head could almost be teasing rather than accusatory—but the Mandalorian doesn’t really seem like the teasing type, not about the kid, and between the helmet and his headache Luke can’t get a clear read of the Force. Luke feels his face burn. 

“She wasn’t a threat to the child, I would have felt it.” 

Grogu’s ears were perked up and he seems perfectly content with the woman, even as she liberates her hair. 

“She was a threat to you and you didn’t feel it.”

He pushes a hand through his hair, damp with sweat at the roots. Luke wasn’t used to people doubting his abilities. “She wasn’t a threat. She was—protective.”

And fast. There is no excuse, really. He should have seen it coming. He’s felt Leia’s energy in the Force, how protective she is of Ben, but he’d never been on the wrong side of it. No one has ever tried to protect something from _him_. 

The woman has her blaster in her belt, which was some relief. When Artoo rolls at the Mandalorian, beeping defensively about Luke’s accomplishments, Luke doesn’t even have time to call it off before the rusty maintenance droids have sprung up and started herding it backwards. The Mandalorian relaxes when the droids and their argument are relegated to the landing pad and turns back to Luke. 

“You took out a platoon of dark troopers.” 

Sure, Luke thought, but he’d walked onto an Imperial lightcruiser. Troopers he’d been prepared for. All he could manage was a shrug. Explaining could only crack his head open or drop him deeper down this very unimpressive hole he found himself in. 

The Mandalorian _hmm_ s softly, turning to the woman whose curly hair barely reaches the Mandalorian’s pauldrons. “Thank you, Peli.”

“Well,” she purses her lips, “I’m sorry for the misunderstanding. I won’t bill you for the pad time.” 

She didn’t sound sorry, but Luke nodded, rolling his shoulders. They ache badly enough that he wonders if he sprained something. He wanted to ask how she expected him to pay for pad time—how much pad time? How long had he been out?— when he’d been held hostage and unconscious _by her_ , but this was Tatooine. He had no doubt the traffic authority would side with her unless he threw his name around, which was both attention he didn’t need and a story he desperately didn’t want anyone—Han—to know. 

“Don’t apologize,” the Mandalorian says. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“She _shot me_.” Luke cringes the moment the words are out, but they’re both ignoring him. He almost wants to laugh. When was the last time anyone ignored him. 

The tiny woman smacks his beskarred arm with the the back of her hand. “Carry a comlink, would you?”

“My first stop. I’ll cover the pad time,” he says. “It’s my fault.”

There is that loyalty again—or maybe a better word is honor. It wasn’t at all his fault, no one here but him thought so. But he did think so, the Force whirled around him with guilt and regret and a wide ribbon of happiness. Grogu smiles up at his father, babbling softly. They’re not quite words, but they are a story. Luke can feel the memory unfolding in the Force as Grogu tells his father about the time they were apart in small noises, the memory has more insects than Luke would have expected. Luke feels—something, when the Mandalorian runs a finger over Grogu’s ear. 

He nods at the toddler seriously, “Yes, Peli earned it.” 

Luke looks up at the suns to see how long he’s been out, but the long fall of dusk has started and they’re out of view. Hours, at least, if the Mandalorian was able to get here. It’s really no wonder everything from his head to his ankles hurt. 

“Mando—“ Grogu makes a sharp lean towards his father before she can finish, and the Mandalorian snags him automatically, holding him high against his chest. Grogu laughs and taps on the Mandalorian’s metal cheek.

“As a thank you. I owe you one, now.” Luke can’t see everything in his hand, though the world has more or less anchored itself in place, but he sees the distinctive white-blue color of Calamari flan. 

“Alright,” she says after a minute, clearly unable to read anything more out of the helmet than Luke was before she slides the coins into a pocket. “You looking for a job?”

A sigh fuzzes through the vocoder. “No,” the helmet turns to look at Luke. There’s no expression, obviously, but he feels pinned by the weight of his gaze anyway. It’s different from the soft grief that had spilled over on the cruiser when he’d walked away. This was firm, decided, grounded in a way that emotion hadn’t been—and all of it focused on Luke. “I’ve gotta take Grogu to school.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want y'all to know I spent way too much time trying to figure out how people were going to call Din if the Razor Crest was gone, since that was the ONLY PLACE HE EVER ANSWERED A COM. Din is like the uncle who still only has a landline, and I never solved the problem which is the real reason Luke had to be unconscious. *finger guns* 
> 
> Hope you enjoyed! I'm very new to the fanfic game, but I am a hardcore completionist in all hobbies so more is on the horizon. I appreciate every kudo and comment, and wish you all a happy 2021.


	2. mos eisley

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fennec takes a sip of her drink and fails to swallow her smile. “The famous Jedi taken out by Mando’s backwater mechanic.” 
> 
> “She’s a good mechanic,” the Mandalorian says. “No, don’t put it all in your mouth at once.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote such a long chapter I ended up breaking it into two. Sorry, it took longer to get off Tatooine than expected? I don’t know what to tell you.

Luke lets himself be pushed gently out of Hangar 3-5, the Mandalorian’s hand warm on his shoulder. 

The sky is the long purple of first twilight, the first sun a red dot falling across the horizon. He looks down the street, and besides the dust bitten stormtrooper helmets piked at the corner, nothing has changed. He expected to see Mos Eisley as changed at he is, but the city has only worn deeper around the edges, retrofitted moisture spires dotting the street, with sand gathering in the same corners it always had. 

There's a droid at the bar, now, which was new. The Mandalorian orders a drink and dinner, which turns out to be nausage and crepes that had been sitting under the warmer for who knew how long. Luke feels his throat close up at the smell anyway, which was early mornings and Aunt Beru and his uncle, grumpy and taciturn across the table, and it’s too much. It hurt, like time hadn’t passed, like he’d just stepped over the rise and found the burnt shell of their home all over again. 

Grogu peered under the Mandalorian’s armored elbow at Luke, who’d fallen a step behind, and cooed sadly at him, hand outstretched. 

Luke dredges up a smile which freezes on his face when he sees where they are going—or rather, who is sitting in what Luke would forever think of as Han’s booth. He doesn’t know the man or the woman, but he does recognize the helmet and the dent above the vizor. His feet fuse to the ground. 

“Boba Fett?”

The man has long scars stretched across his face and a dark drink in his hand. The expression isn’t welcoming. If Luke were any less stunned, it might have even been chilling. “Skywalker.” 

“Skywalker?” The Mandalorian turns. “You two know each other?”

“He handed a friend of mine over to Jabba the Hutt to die.” 

“Your friend threw me in a sarlacc pit.”

“Interesting friends.” Even through the vocoder, Luke could tell that was blithe. “This is Fennec.” 

“I don’t think you can talk about interesting friends.” Fennec’s tone is wry even as she lifts a glass of something electric blue Luke’s way. She looks him over top to bottom, and he has a feeling she knows where all his weapons are from that one glance, be it the lightsaber to the blaster at the small of his back. 

The Mandalorian doesn’t wait to be asked, he just sets the dishes on the table and slides in beside Fett, who’s still watching Luke with those unwavering dark eyes. “Wasn’t personal. Just a job. I’d say your friend and I are square, wouldn’t you?” 

Luke sits down slowly—painfully—on Fennec’s side of the table, watching the Mandalorian pull the satchel around so the little one can peek over the top. Mando takes a nausage off the plate and pushes the rest of the food over to Luke. 

“Eat something. Your head will feel better.” 

Luke watches him hand over the nausage to the little one. “What about you?”

“I’m fine.” 

Fennec takes a sip of her drink and fails to swallow her smile. “The famous Jedi taken out by Mando’s backwater mechanic.” 

Fett starts laughing and doesn’t stop, half-choking on his drink.

“She’s a good mechanic,” the Mandalorian says. “No, don’t put it all in your mouth at once.” 

Luke feels some of the tension unwind in his chest as he watches the Mandalorian with Grogu. “She was certainly competent,” he says, when the silence expands further than he can stand. 

“I need a ship,” the Mandalorian says. “I’m going to take the kid to get settled.”

Luke takes a bite of dustcrepe to have something to do with his mouth that isn’t defend himself, especially since he isn’t sure he wants to talk the Mandalorian out of coming. He should. No one is supposed to know where the school is outside the Jedi Order—not that it’s a real secret or a real school just yet, or that there even is an Order. Leia, Han, and Chewie know, what was one more, really? He didn’t have any other padawans. He looks at Grogu, whose wide eyes are just over the edge of the table. His first real student was a toddler, even if he was some fifty years old. He wouldn’t take Ben from Leia and he was five—Ben could actually speak. 

_Should your father come with us, little one?_

He knew the answer, but the tidal wave of affirmation in the Force made him smile just the same. 

“You could have taken a ship from the cruiser.” Fennec sipped a drink that was so strong Luke felt his nose burning from the other side of the table. 

“An Imperial fighter? Because I need a larger target on my back.”

She sets her elbow on the table and leans forward, gesturing at the whole of him. “You’re wearing a starship worth of beskar. I promise, the target doesn’t get any larger.”

He sighs. “Yeah.”

“You could paint it,” Fennec suggests, settling back in the booth. 

“I could not,” the Mandalorian says, making both Fett and Fennec laugh. 

“You won’t be able to bargain wearing that armor.” Fett’s voice isn’t anything like Luke thought it would be—though neither is his face. 

“That’s the favor. I know you have somewhere to be—“

“I do. Too long and people will know I’m coming.” 

“I don’t need much. It just needs to last me to—“ he looks at Luke, as if Luke is going to give two mercenaries the coordinates to his school. He swallows quickly. 

“The other side of the Outer Rim,” Luke finishes. 

For all Fennec doesn’t make a sound, she is definitely laughing at them. “You were saying?”

“I can get a ship,” Luke says. Force knows he’s got the credits for one. “Clearly I need a larger transport anyway. A padawan any bigger than Grogu and I’d have needed to borrow the _Falcon_.” 

“You shouldn’t have to spend your money,” the Mandalorian says. 

“Is there a covert nearby who’d lend you one?” Fennec asks.

“It’s not a problem,” Luke insists. “Actually, you’d be helping me, since I wouldn’t need to arrange a flight.”

“That’s right,” Fett lets out a laugh loud enough to startle Grogu. “Fennec told me you had the saber. Sith hells, I’d’ve liked to see her face.” 

“I’m not taking a covert’s ship, even if I found one—there isn’t one in this parsec.”

“The Mand’alor needs to have a ship. After I take care of my business here, I am sure I can find one for you.” Fett’s words are both ominous and reassuring in turn. With his headache abating,—the food was definitely helping—Luke can feel more nuance in the Force; the way it churns around Boba Fett makes Luke want to pull Grogu to his side of the table. 

“I will get you a ship,” Luke says, finally he commanding the attention of the table. And also the patrons at the bar. He lowers his voice. “We will get a transport, which you will deliver to the school for me, so that I will have more than my X-wing if I need it. We don’t need to wait.” 

The table is still a moment, the Mandalorian staring at him. It ticks up his heartbeat, that attention, the focus. People listened when Luke spoke, he’d gotten used to it, but there was something about the Mandalorian’s undivided attention that was just—better. It was better than Fett’s and Fennec’s and everyone else Luke could call to mind. 

It’s Fennec’s turn to laugh, quieter than Fett’s and perhaps only half as mean, but the look on her face sets a flush burning up Luke’s. “Well, that’s settled, then. Skywalker will get you a ship.”

“I’m sorry to bother you,” the Mandalorian says. 

Fett shakes his head. “You know how to reach us, if you need me.”

His helmet turns, a pause before he says, “Yes,” like he doesn’t know quite what to do with the offer. Luke eats the last of the nausage and looks at Grogu, wondering why his father is so surprised. Mandalorians were supposed to stick together, weren’t they? That's what all the stories said.

Grogu’s explanation is full of dark tunnels and heat and the smell of hot metal and really doesn’t answer the question at all. 

\------

The second sun is about an hour from the horizon, if Luke is any judge, and since nothing about Tatooine has changed in his absence, he feels confident stepping around a skittish ronto and setting off for Aranth’s.

He feels the moment they draw attention, a small group stepping out of a side street and trailing behind them. He falls beside the Mandalorian and puts a hand on his arm before it can go for his blaster. The set up is a familiar one, and sure enough, a pair steps out from behind the next business into their path. 

Luke already has his hand in the air, “You don’t want to bother with us.” He feels their minds tugging against the suggestion and puts more pressure on the next one. “We look like more trouble than we’re worth.” 

“They look like more trouble than they’re worth,” the tallest of the group says dully. 

“We should leave before you change your mind,” Luke adds, when they don’t step out of the way.

“You should get out of here before we change our minds.”

With a restraining hand on his elbow, Luke pulls the Mandalorian away from the group. His helmet turns to look behind them, watching until the group disappears between buildings again.

“What the hell was that?” The Mandalorian says, his voice low and harsh.

“It’s called a mind trick.” The Mandalorian’s breathing is audible through his vizor, and Luke rushes to explain. “It’s a suggestion, using the Force.”

“You can just—make people do what you want?”

Luke had never thought about how it looked from the outside. When Ben had done it it had been incredible. “No—I mean, that’s the idea, but it only works on the weak-minded. They were tired, they didn’t want to attack us anyway. It’s always easier when you’re suggesting something they already want to do.”

“Could you do that to me?” he asks after a minute of tense walking. 

Luke laughs outright, and then cuts it off when the helmet jerks around. “No, I’m sorry, it’s just—I doubt anyone has ever called you weak.” He doesn’t seem reassured. Actually, he’s even tenser than he was when Luke first saw him on the lightcruiser. He scrambles for a way to convince him. “I could try it on you, if you wanted—not like that, just something small. And then you’d know what it felt like. Like I said, it doesn’t work on everyone. You could probably fight it off.” 

Their steps in the sand and the faint echo of ronto calls are the only noise for a minute, the streetlights of Mos Eisley few and far between. Luke is searching for something else to add when he says, “No.”

“No, of course,” Luke agrees immediately. Oh, the Force suggestion disturbed you? Would you like me to do it to you? Because that wouldn’t be unnerving at all. Sith hells, what was wrong with him today. “Sorry.”

Aranth’s is in sight, thankfully, and Luke walks a little faster to get to the gate first.

“This is a junkyard,” the Mandalorian says from further behind than Luke had expected. Luke turns on his heel and starts walking backwards. 

“It’s Tatooine.”

There were hangars that sold ships, of course, but hangar hands tend to come and go. Uncle Owen had hammered it into Luke: if it was something that you had to rely on, it was better to buy from someone you knew. Locals took care of each other out here, in a way even the Rebellion hadn't been able to match outside of Han and Leia. During the war, the cause always came first—and it made sense, it was too important to risk on one person—but Luke missed this feeling, only realizing it now that he's back. 

The yard was full of broken vaporators and speeder discards, but against the far side of the lot were mostly abandoned ships, sand coated and unimpressive. Two Y-wings—one clearly being cannibalized to complete the other, a junk hauler, and what could possibly be a VCR-578 transport under all the modifications. 

Aranth remembered Luke, and probably more importantly remembered Uncle Owen, and she didn’t give him too hard a time when it came to going over the VCR. Someone had sold off the ship when someone else died, the hand they sold it too had crossed Bib Fortuna and bolted, and the ship had ended up here. The Mandalorian lets Grogu toddle around the upper deck while Luke goes over the engines—it has engines—and the hyperdrive—it was…plugged in, it wasn’t covered in sand, both good signs—and the bridge, which had worn green seats for a pilot, co-pilot, and two dark blue seats for gunners.

It isn’t an X-wing or a skyhopper, and Luke wasn’t an expert at starships, but everything was where it should be with no surprises. The modifications don’t give off the peaceful Jedi vibe, but it is the perfect size and something about it feels right—the odd coloring of the interior, ceilings high enough for Chewie to stand in, bunks in the cargo hold that fold out of the wall. 

He takes a deep breath and centers himself in the Force, trying to find the reason for his instant kinship. He is afraid it has more to do with watching Grogu discover stairs and the Mandalorian carefully helping him climb them than any specific quality the ship possesses. The ship is worn, but has that long-life, well-loved feeling he gets from the _Falcon_. Luke had learned to trust his instincts, they rarely steer him wrong. 

Though sometimes they _completely abandoned him_ to the mercy of petite mechanics. 

“Do you want Peli to go over it before you fly it?” Luke asks, turning in the pilot’s seat. 

The Mandalorian looks up from the nav computer settings. “You’re the one buying it.”

“I’m not going to make you fly across the galaxy in a ship you don’t trust.” He looks at Grogu, who is standing on the co-pilot’s chair. 

“Don’t touch,” the Mandalorian says, blocking his little fingers from a switch before turning back to Luke. There’s a moment before he says, “If you say it’s fine, it’s fine.”

Luke looks into his vizor and nods slowly, his hand skating the dashboard. “It’s a good ship.”

Something rumbles hard, rocking them forward, and the Mandalorian falls sideways into Luke. He’s only in Luke’s lap for a moment, hard muscles and smooth beskar landing on him and gone, finding his footing and pushing off before Luke can do more than lose his breath and grab his chest plate for balance. His cock showing an interest only when the Mandalorian is already gone, reaching for the newly lit button and scooping the laughing baby up with his other hand. 

“ _No_. No, don’t touch those you don’t know what they do.”

That only seems to make Grogu laugh harder. Luke stands too, red-faced, letting his cloak hide his embarrassment, prepared to go tell Aranth they’re taking the ship, when the Mandalorian turns around, so much closer than expected. His vambrace rubs against Luke’s chest, Grogu pressed between them, his head tipped back and still grinning. His tiny claws pat Luke’s sternum. 

“You’re alright?” The words buzz with something that might be concern, but sounds too nervous. 

“Fine.” The word is slightly strangled and anyone who knew him would have smirked—but they don’t know each other, which feels like regret and relief at the same time. “I’ll tell her we’re taking the ship if you want to warm her up. You can fly her to Peli’s and I’ll move the X-wing over. They should both fit, it’s not that big.” 

Luke is at the stairs to the cargo hold and looks over his shoulder to find father and son watching him. “Alright?”

When the Mandalorian nods, Luke feels for a moment like he’s given something up that he should have held on to, but the man just gives him a curt, “Sure,” before turning back to the conn. 

\------

The Mandalorian takes off while Luke is walking back to the hangar, he must run the ship through its paces because it’s a long ten minutes after Luke and Peli move the X-wing over before he brings her in to land. 

Luke is pleased to see she lands smoothly, the Mandalorian handling her with ease despite the dark and crowded pad. Peli started transferring the registration of the ship while they waited and now she meets Mando halfway up the gangway, reading him an extended version of the riot she’d opened on Luke for letting the baby fly in a strange junker. The Mandalorian stands there and takes it, too, which might be the most endearing thing Luke had ever seen.

Eventually Peli retreats into the newly named _Patience_ , and Grogu and his father finish their descent down the ramp. 

“Odd name for a ship,” the Mandalorian says. None of the tension that had been clinging to them since the mind trick is in the words, and Luke grabs on to the question with both hands. 

“I figured something innocuous was best. It’s something my old master always said I needed more of.” Luke swallows. “He was like Grogu, actually. The same species, I mean.” The child’s head came up at his name. “Master Yoda,” he adds, and immediately Grogu shares memories of his wizened green face, of his violently present cane poking and prodding older padawans, and he can feel Master Yoda in those memories, that oasis of calm in the Force. He sends back some of Dagobah, of his training. “Yes, that Yoda.” 

“He knew him?”

“He was on the Jedi Council while Grogu studied at the Coruscant Temple. No,” Luke says to the vague question floating through the Force. “No, he passed away.” 

Grogu’s ears go down and he sinks into the satchel. 

Luke swallows and hands over the coordinates. “You can’t get there before me. It might…make people nervous.” 

He isn’t actually sure anyone is waiting for him. He’d been in the Core with Leia and Ben when Grogu reached out, and gone first to Tython before following the Force bond to the Outer Rim. It’s just as likely—maybe more likely—that no one is around, but better to be safe.

The Mandalorian looks at the _Patience_ —who, admittedly, doesn't look like something that could outpace an X-wing—and sighs. “I don’t think that’ll be a problem.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your comments and kudos are responsible for me writing 10k in 2 days, so thank you. Your enjoyment is everything, and I am so glad I’m entertaining you. 🖤 Please tell me your favorite tropes! I can’t make any promises, but so far I’m having the time of my life packing them in.


	3. dravian starport

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I removed my helmet.” 
> 
> She extends a hand, inviting him to the table. “Tell me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh look, it’s the chapter where I learned how to use a goddamn time skip! And still, this chapter was so long I almost cut it again—but no, I have been waiting, I wrote my favorite scene in this chapter immediately after finishing Chapter One, and I need you all with me.

Yavin 4 reminds Din of Sorgan. Heavy with green and cloudcover, it couldn’t be further from Tatooine if the Jedi had tried, and Din wonders if that wasn’t the point. The _Patience_ lands softly—but certainly not quietly—by the X-wing, across a long field from a stone building the shape of a bell. The school is visible from the air, but only when you’re right over the clearing. The jungle is all tall trees and rolling hills that create an unending sea of green occasionally broken by brown cliffs and wide rivers. 

There is a wide front door made of dark wood set into a stone wall. He knocks and waits, and when no one answers he knocks again. His helmet picks up the tread of hurried footsteps long seconds before the door opens. 

“You made it.” His smile is brilliant, even before he spots the kid. “Hello, Grogu. Come in, please.” 

The building is old, weather-worn gray stone bolstered by wooden supports, the front door opening into a colonnade with gardens on either side. One is full of short grass and stacked stones, the other overgrown with greens that spill onto the path. The wall that wraps around the compound is probably only twice tall as Din is himself. 

“This is a meditation garden, and this is—well, I haven’t cleared it yet, but, it’ll be more of a flower garden and eventually, maybe we’ll grow some of our own food? For now I take the speeder into town, on the other side of the divide.” He opens a door into the main structure, the room immediately to the right is open and full of—stuff, stacked chairs and crates and tools probably used in the garden. There’s a set of hooks on the wall beside the door where a black robe hangs. 

Din follows the Jedi deeper into the building, the short hallway opening to a tall central room with a long table. Most of the room’s light came from windows set at the highest point of the curved roof. There is a kitchen through a wide archway, and the Jedi turns in the middle of the empty room. “I don’t have a lot of stuff, I mean, obviously.”

He isn’t surprised. “No attachments, right?” 

There’s a whine and whirr as the Jedi’s R-unit rolls in, towing a bucket and swearing. Din doesn’t speak binary, but his helmet could transfer just fine. “You…cleaned for us?”

“Oh, no, that’s—“ He cut himself off, staring at his droid for a moment with hands on his hips, before turning to fully face them. “I haven’t been here, in a few weeks. I wasn’t really prepared for company. Not that I’m not prepared,” he adds quickly, looking at Grogu. “I am. You can have your choice of rooms,” he starts walking again, down the hall opposite the entrance, “I cleaned out these two here, I wasn’t sure which you might prefer.”

Both rooms were large by Din’s standards, with wide windows cut out of the wall and dressed with wooden shutters. The air filters in his helmet cut out most of his sense of smell, but the scent of cleaning supplies hung heavy in the air. 

“The bed is too big for him,” he says, reaching up to let Grogu grab on to his finger. 

The Jedi blinks. “The bed is for you.”

“For me?”

“I have a smaller one for Grogu—well, still maybe too big for him, but we can put it in either room.” 

“I thought—“ He looks at the bed, trying to parse the words. Ahsoka Tano wouldn’t teach Grogu because of his attachment. Even this Jedi had taken him away from Din. “The other Jedi said he was too attached to me.”

“The other Jedi?”

“She wouldn’t train him. She said it could lead to the Dark.” Grogu doesn’t like that, he squeezes his finger tighter. “She said it was better if his abilities faded away.”

“Who was this?”

“Her name was Ahsoka Tano. She sent us to Tython. She said it was dangerous.” 

As much as everything in him revolted at the idea of putting Grogu down and never picking him up again, he wouldn’t—couldn’t risk hurting him. Tano had been so sure it would. He could have Din or he could become a Jedi. Din couldn’t strip Grogu of part of himself because it hurt to let him go. 

The Jedi doesn’t speak for a long, frustrating minute. “I didn’t know there was anyone left.” He scrubs a hand through his hair. “It’s not that she’s wrong—the old Jedi forbid attachments and distanced themselves from emotion. Strong emotions can lead you to the Dark side, fear and anger and hate, particularly. But that doesn’t mean it’s realistic to think you will never feel any emotions at all, and I don’t intend to found a new Jedi Order by ripping my padawans from everyone they love. It would be hypocritical at best—I have a sister who I have no intention of giving up. Being in the Light does not mean you cannot love.” He traces one of Grogu’s ears. “As long as your son wants you here, you will always be welcome.” 

Grogu trills, his big eyes and open smile turning on Din, breaking any resolve he’d dredged up to leave him for his own good. 

“I can’t stay forever,” he tells the kid, who lets out a hard _pfft_. Din smiles, grateful no one can see how relief waters his eyes. “Which room do you want, then?”

Grogu picks the room on the right, the unruly garden spilling around the window, and Luke goes to fetch the bed. Din sets the satchel on dresser and opens a door to a small refresher, which has a door leading to the neighboring room. With the shutters of this room closed, the room feels sad and stale, and Din closes it again when he hears the Jedi coming back.

He’s floating it with him, three pieces and a mattress that Skywalker sets down on the bed. They all snap together to make a crib and once Luke’s set the mattress inside he looks at the kid and asks, “What do we think?” 

Grogu toddles over and the Jedi picks him up to set him inside. Din thinks he could get out of it if he wanted too—stars alone know the kids gotten out of every other place Din put him for safekeeping—and it’s probably almost as wide as Din’s bed on the _Razor Crest_ , so it’s probably too big, but it fits neatly under the window and it’s not like there isn’t the space for it. The kid plops himself on his butt in the crib and starts laughing at them. 

“You’re sure it’s safe?” He can’t help but ask. It’s too good to be true, it’s everything he wants—and he isn’t the sort of person who gets what he wants, so there is a catch, somewhere. 

The Jedi looks up from where he’s kneeling by the crib. “We can only give him the tools to survive. The path he chooses to walk with them—that has to be up to him.”

The words hit so true, so deep, that it’s almost like a physical blow. It’s as close as he’s ever heard an outsider speak to the Creed. He nods. “Thank you, Skywalker.”

He pushes to his feet. “Luke,” he says, holding out a hand. “Luke Skywalker.” 

“Din Djarin.” He shakes his hand. It isn’t a foreign feeling, exactly. Mandalorians and soldiers clasped forearms, generally, but a lot of clients close deals with handshakes. Still, the moment is—charged, somehow. 

“I’ll give you both a moment to settle in, see what I can dig up in the kitchen that isn’t rations.”

He closed the door behind him, leaving them in the quiet light of the afternoon. Grogu begins burbling almost immediately, pulling himself to his feet and asking for up with reaching hands.

Din takes Luke’s place kneeling in front of the crib, and before he pulls him into his arms, he takes a deep breath and pulls off his helmet. He sets it on the ground with a hollow _thunk_ , watching Grogu’s hands go from insistent to demanding, his little claws touching his cheeks in gentle trails. 

The Jedi isn’t taking him away. He’s allowed to stay with him. Tears escape when he smiles down at the baby, whose sounds take on an earnest tone. He shakes his head.

“It’s alright.” That is such an understatement that Din laughs. “I’m alright.” He sniffs back more tears and scoops Grogu out of his crib, standing. “ _Ad’ika_ ,” he whispers, finally letting the word he’s always held in his own mind pass his lips. 

Grogu’s ears flex to full attention, his sounds petering out as he stares into Din’s eyes. 

“ _Ni kar'tayl gai sa'ad_ ,” he whispers. _I know your name as my child_. He’s trembling and sure the little one can feel it. He’d refused to think on it, because his quest was to return the child to its own kind. To have the Jedi turn around and say Grogu could have both—there is no room in his heart for how that makes him feel, to be able to claim by creed what had already been true. He is overrun. 

His son’s fingertips skate over his lips. “ _Brr_ ,” he purrs and Din’s smile hurts. 

“Yes.” He nods, and keeps nodding. Din doesn’t know if the kid meant it, if it was just a sound, or how he might have learned it. It doesn’t matter. His happiness spilling over, he says, “I’m _Buir_.”

\------

Luke Skywalker’s school was run nothing like the Fighting Corps. There was very little by way of a schedule or curriculum. He isn’t sure if that’s the way the Jedi wanted things, or if it’s because trying to enforce anything resembling structure on Grogu, who seemed to tire very quickly during their exercises, was nearly impossible. Luke made them breakfast in the kitchen, always with some leftover for Din to eat after they’d left. They spent a lot of time in the meditation garden in the mornings, lifting and sending rocks sailing back and forth. Sometimes Din came out to find Luke pulling up plants in the overgrown half, Grogu lost to the undergrowth but for his heat signature, chasing bugs or worms or whatever he could wrap his claws around.

He and Luke spar during Grogu’s naps. Not with the darksaber—Din has it tucked in his satchel, he isn’t ready to think about it just yet—but with his beskar spear. Luke is fast, more graceful than he really has any right to be, but Din had armor, decades of training, and deeper endurance. As he grows more comfortable with the spear, as he takes Luke’s pointers on form and practices the figures, he grows less defensive in their matches, his long reach and honed reflexes even surprising the Jedi on occasion. Very little he did could countermand the Force, and after the third time Luke ends a fight on top of him, the heat of the saber disappearing back into its hilt, Luke sweaty and victorious and laughing above him, Din realizes the fights are effecting more than his ego. 

Luke’ suddenly tumbles over sideways, surprise replacing his smile, rolling onto the damp grass with a grunt.

Grogu, awake but blinking slowly from some distance away with one tiny hand extended, has pushed Luke with the Force, and Din finds his breath again even as Luke loses his laughing. 

It isn’t that Din was ignorant of the idea—sex is just never his first thought; it was something others brought into the equation, which he could pick up or ignore depending, and usually he ignored the suggestion because it never really seemed worth the effort. He’d gotten off with Paz Viszla in the covert when he was younger, before he was selected to be their face above ground and Paz was not. It hadn’t been anything more than mutual satisfaction and an exercise in aggression—hard and fast, aching muscles and bruises, until the tension bled out of them and they went their separate ways.

He’d gone to bed with Xi’an when they’d been on Ran’s crew, partly to see what all the fuss was about but mostly because she’d worn him down. It had always taken him a long time to get off, which she had liked, but she was constantly grabbing his helmet, which he did not. He learned having sex with a Mandalorian gave people a certain amount of cred in the underworld, and Din wasn’t interested in the attention.

Omera was, perhaps, a missed opportunity to feel something softer, but it had been obvious—she had wanted him with his face, and that was more than he was willing to sacrifice. 

The Jedi had already seen it.

When he finally sits up it’s to see Luke on all fours in front of Grogu, golden head bent low, explaining the difference between sparring and real fighting, and promising not to hurt Din on purpose, training is important because it makes sure they didn’t get hurt for _real_ —

Din is fucked.

When all of his systems are finally back under control, he leaves them to more training, and avoids Luke’s next invitation to spar by not being in the complex during their lessons for the next two days.

Din works on the _Patience_ instead, tightening or taking off the aftermarket modifications with the tools that were buried in what Din has started to think of as the catch-all room. The ship has simple lines beneath it all, a boxy nose for the bridge that rounds out to a large cargo hold on the back end and crew lodgings on top of that. It’s bigger than anything Din’s flown, but also more compact. The entire Tribe could have flown in it without much suffering—they’d certainly been in more uncomfortable places before they’d settled in the covert. 

Stripping away an entirely unnecessary spoiler and letting it fall into the grass, Din misses the _Razor Crest_ with a bitter sort of grief. The covert had scoured and saved for that ship after the last face of their covert had failed to return from a job; rationing and strategizing on what he should buy, what he would need. Din had been away from Nevarro for months, working unsavory crews and even worse jobs that had chipped away at his sleeping hours, to buy a ship that would help him join the Guild and support them all. 

He got out the angle grinder and set to work smoothing out the welding marks on the hull. All of it was gone—the covert, the ship, his reputation with the Guild. He believed Greef had set it right, but he didn’t know another broker, didn’t want to work his way into another’s good graces by doing the shit pucks no one else would take.

He knew he needed to ask Luke to drop him on a planet where he can find work—he’d had a few credits in his pocket when the _Razor Crest_ went up, but nothing that could buy him a ship or even a ride on a planet hopper. 

There’s a tight feeling in his chest whenever he thinks about it. He’s providing nothing for his clan and it doesn’t sit well. He wasn’t the face of the covert anymore, the pressure should be gone, but he isn’t used to being idle. Luke had taken on Grogu and left Din with no responsibilities but the ones he makes for himself. It is—uncomfortable, is the best he can come up with. He wonders if this was how Paz Viszla felt sitting in the sewers of Nevarro--but Paz had been in charge of the Fighting Corps and teaching the foundlings, which were each vital responsibilities. 

“Din?” He looks down to find Luke holding Grogu past the end of the gangway. “Everything alright?” 

“Just resealing some of these seams—should move quieter now.” He’d left the additional armaments, but given the general quality work attaching the rest of the mods to the ship he wouldn’t trust them to fire, much less fire straight, without a careful pass over the wiring.

“I’m sure it will.” He looks at Grogu, who’s talking in his soft sounds. “I thought we could head into town, if you’re not tied up.”

He puts down the sander. “I don’t exactly blend in.”

Luke’s smile is wry. “Neither do I, but no one’s given me away yet.”

Din doesn’t want to jeopardize the school, and a Mandalorian in silver beskar is high-value gossip—even if Bo-Katan hasn’t told anyone about the darksaber, and why would she—people used to whisper about him before he’d even left the room. There are too many stories about Mandalorians for people to keep their mouths shut. 

These days some of those stories are even about him. 

“I would appreciate the company,” Luke says. 

He is without a doubt the softest person Din has ever met. Oh, Din believes he could be dangerous. He’d seen the control he wields in the Force during his demonstrations for Grogu, he watched him take down those darktroopers on the security feed, and Luke has had him on his ass when they spar. But he is so unfailingly kind, and he never expects anything in return. 

“Let me put away the tools,” Din says. 

Town is two hours by speeder. Luke drives fast, his hair whipping around his head in a golden crown as they blow over the undergrowth and zip around trees. Din forces himself to watch Grogu instead, the smile on the Jedi’s face doing complicated things inside his ribcage. His son is ecstatic with their speed the whole way into town, his eyes taking in everything as they blur through the jungle. Din sees the town long before they arrive: a clearing cut out of the valley by the river, a handful of starships parked at one end of it. Luke drives through and parks on the far side by an open market. 

Luke knew better how to work the kitchen, Din having lived his entire life on rations, so Luke moves from stand to stand and hands Din things to carry, holding up both sides of the conversation mostly on his own. Din lets the words wash over him, stories of good meals, bad meals, other markets, other worlds—the Jedi asks questions: “Have you been—?”, “Have you tried—?”, but he doesn’t seem to expect Din to share overmuch. He looks at Grogu for approval of foods often, and the answer is always yes. 

He doesn’t think Grogu has found anything he wouldn’t put in his mouth. 

He’s just set an overexcited Grogu down by a fish tank when his comlink goes off. He’s about to pick Grogu up again and deal with the unhappy consequences, when he realizes he doesn’t have to. He calls to Luke, “Can you watch him?”

Luke stops talking with the vendor, and looks at Grogu—face flattened to the glass, already stepping over before his eyes find Din. “Of course.”

“Don’t let him eat the fish.”

Luke’s laugh is bright and pure. “Alright.”

Din steps away and heads down an alley between stands, hitting the com. The image that resolves is a surprise. “Cara.”

“I’m glad I caught you.” Her holo is torso up, and clearly moving, brushing in and out of focus at the edges. “The credits from Gideon’s bounty were assigned to your Guild number, you’ll need to find a broker for the chip. Are you alone?”

The street is mostly deserted, but nevertheless, “No.”

“Alright, well, a friend of yours called. Gold, fur,” there’s a brief pause before she adds, “hot.”

She didn’t know that. He is sure Cara couldn’t know that. Or was it a pun? “Is she alright?”

“Well, she called me, which bowled me over, but otherwise she sounded exactly like the last time we saw her.”

He knew what she meant—the Armorer was the Tribe’s anchor. Assessing, unshakeable, immutable. The covert had been led by a council, but there was no one whose words held more weight. 

“What did she need?”

“She wanted you to meet her—I’ll send the coordinates.” 

“Do you have her comlink?”

She shakes her head. “Called from a public terminal.”

It isn’t as much of a relief as he would have thought—or rather, the relief is immediately a snarl of guilt and no small piece of fear at the thought of facing the Armorer. His comlink beeps with a coordinates set. It’s a spaceport on the other side of the Outer Rim—of course. 

There were only three ships at the far end of town. He doubted any of them are going to get him there. 

“Did she say when?”

“No. Didn’t say much of anything really. I was too surprised to ask questions.”

She likely wouldn’t have answered them anyway. “Thank you for the message.”

“Not a problem. Say hi to the baby for me.” 

The holovid cuts out. 

He puts a hand on the wall and lets his head fall for a minute. It was never going to last, he’d known that, but the idea of leaving so soon after getting permission to stay—it leaves a sour taste on his tongue. 

“Din?” Luke is at the end of the alley, a dripping Grogu in his arms. “Everything alright?”

Din pushes off the wall, swallowing back the sadness. “What did you do you, womp rat?” He rubs two fingers over the top of his head, fluffing the few hairs there. 

“He tried for the fish.” Luke’s face is pink from his nose to his the tops of his ears. “I thought you were kidding.”

“Hm.” 

“What’s wrong?” Luke asks, looking him over, as if Din could have gotten into a scrape a dozen feet away without him noticing.

“I have to go.” The words are rough, and he can’t help the apology that follows. “Sorry.” He’s not sure who he’s directing it to, except he wants to wipe the sad look off Grogu’s face and Luke’s expression is one he doesn’t recognize. “A Mandalorian has called for me. I need to find her.”

“We could—“

“I must go alone.” The Armorer endured Din bringing strangers into the fallen covert. He doesn’t think she would be so forgiving of her new home, he doesn’t know if she will forgive him for breaking the Creed. He doesn’t really want an audience when he finds out. “I need to see who is left of my Tribe.”

“You don’t seem—happy. To have heard from her, I mean.”

Din doesn’t bother to explain the intermediary or about removing his helmet, only, “She was the leader of my people, before the covert revealed itself to protect us. Many of my brothers and sisters died. I do not think the meeting will—go well,” he finishes. He looks at Grogu, whose ears have fallen against his skull. “If she wants to see me, I have to go. I’m going to see if any of the ships in the yard are heading my way.” 

Luke frowns, an uncertain line creasing his brow. “You should take the _Patience_.”

So many things come to mind—he named it _Patience_ to be innocuous, the port authority record would tie his ship to the Mandalorians for everyone to see, Din really should have seen this offer coming. “What if—“

“I won’t need it. Grogu and I fit in the X-wing if we have to, but I have no plans to leave while you’re gone.”

Din swallows back his objections, because it is easiest, he doesn’t have credits to spare until he finds a Guild broker, and Din isn’t sure how much time he has to find the Armorer before she moves on.

“Alright,” he says softly. 

“We’ll be here,” Luke says. “We’ll be waiting for you to come back.” 

Grogu coos his agreement.

“Alright,” Din says. “I won’t be long.”

\------

He’d always heard Dravian Station was a smuggler’s paradise, and it’s immediately obvious when he enters the system why. Traffic is a snarl around the spaceport, an uneasy balance of ships fighting for docks and fleeing the close quarters. He is cleared to dock almost the moment his request went through, with no direction of where to land. He wonders if it’s because the port authority can’t keep up or if the mess is an intentional, established system. 

It takes him more than an hour to fight for a dock, and he’s pretty sure he only manages because the skiff pilot hadn’t been willing to finish their game of chicken when he realized he was playing against the flat affect of a Mandalorian helmet. 

_Patience_ lands beautifully, much quieter now, and Din disembarks into a steady flow of traffic into the station proper. His first pass of the station, a steady walk through the main levels, gives him a general layout. Bigger businesses, he recognizes some of the brands as Core work, stuck to the outer ring of the station. Living quarters and associated needs for the lowest levels, and everything else is a free for all. There are as many businesses in storefronts as there are vendors pulling hoversleighs of goods. The center of the spaceport is six open levels, transparisteel elevator pods shooting through the middle. 

The station uses the bright white lights that always make Din think Imperial, though the crowd here is anything but. It’s on his second pass through that Din spots the Guild symbol etched on transparisteel; a mostly-empty storefront with a single large desk inside and a sullustan behind it. 

“Do you have a Guild number?” they ask, barely glancing at him.

“Yes,” he says, and at their prompting, he inserts his credentials into the pad on the desk. 

“Would you like a puck assignment.”

“No. I need the credits from my last bounty.”

“Mmm,” the sullustan agrees dully. “Yes, here—“ a break in their boredom as their eyes dart to Din and back to the screen. Din stiffens. “The bounty is in New Republic credits, the Guild takes ten percent, if you wish to have the currency exchanged the Guild will pay out in the currency of your choice for an additional fee.” They pause again. “There are a number of currencies we don’t carry in these quantities, so if you—“

“New Republic is fine.”

“Very good. Your bounty, final total: 450,000 credits,” they say. The machine in front of him spits out a narrow gold chip. 

Din takes the chip and checks it before he nods, reaching into his satchel for a handful of coins which he sets on the desk. “Seen any other Mandalorians?”

The sullustan picks up the money without even looking at it, “Passers through, no one for Guild work. The smith down on level three, elevator four—P’fang’s, blue sign—he does some work in beskar.” 

“Thanks.”

The chip goes inside his armor, his senses on high alert for a potential set up. He hadn’t known what the bounty was on Gideon—he hadn’t know there was a bounty—and half a million in credits is more than he’d ever seen in one place; it was half a decade’s worth of hunting, in one shot. 

It buoys him, just slightly, to have something tangible to hand over to the Armorer. There was a fear in the back of his mind that it would feel like paying for the lives of his brothers and sisters, but that isn’t practical. He needs to provide for his clan and his Tribe, and this does that. 

He stops at a bank in the outer ring of the station and cashes out 50,000 in hard coin. The droid behind the transparisteel is unflinching cold professionalism, and the heavy weight is pushed through the opening with a mechanical, “Thank you for your business.”

The coin goes in the satchel and, there’s nothing else for it, the darksaber gets clipped to his belt. He passes a vendor with a sled piled high with stuffed animals, and before he can talk himself out of it, he’s paying for a frog and hiding it in the bag. 

P’fang—or who Din assumes is P’fang—takes one look at him and points with his tail through the forge. 

It’s a deeper shop than Din would have thought from the opening, dark and hot until he reaches a rear door, which opens into a bright, empty corridor of more doors and a staircase on his right. Just next to the foot of the railing, no bigger than the credit chip safe in his pocket, is the thin lineart of a mythosaur, so simplistic it wouldn’t even look like one to an outsider. 

He finds his way into an industrial sector. The hum of engines and life support running through the walls. He finds the makings of a covert—a well lit, more labyrinthine one than they had on Nevarro, with more doors demarking private spaces—but it is empty. 

His heart is lead when he finds her at the end of the last hall. The room has windows looking out into the emptiness of space and just visible, the tiniest edge of the silver-pink Tamarin Nebula.

“I did not expect you to attend me so soon.” The Armorer does sound the same as ever. The room, which has the durasteel coloring of untreated metal, is all but empty. There is a small forge in the center of the room, a low table, her chests of tools and her bench along one curved wall. The bench has heartbreaking stacks of beskar ingot across its surface.

“I was glad to hear you were alive. Thank you for contacting me.”

“Our Tribe has suffered a great loss. Our Mando’ad must be brought home.”

“You wish to set up here?”

“Unless a better place has been found by the others. You will seek out your brothers and sisters, see where we have ended up.”

“Do you know—“ he can’t bring himself to finish the question.

“I cannot say. Some of the armor I collected was only pieces. There are eleven Mando’ad unaccounted for at all, you and I included.” Din feels his heart choke, even as the Armorer’s voice stays steady. “There were sixteen incomplete _beskar'gam_ recovered from Nevarro, and none of the foundlings. I have heard rumors of a Mandalorian on Belsavis.”

“The ice planet?” Once a smuggler haven, it had been taken over mostly by corporations as far as Din knew. He’s never tracked anyone there. 

“Yes. You will use your skills as a hunter to bring them home. I see your foundling is not with you.”

“He is with the Jedi. I found one to teach him, we have been staying with him.”

She doesn’t ask where, which is a relief, since Din isn’t sure he would tell her. “You still consider him in your care?”

“He is my son.” 

“This is the Way.” For once, her tone is easy to read—pleased, and perhaps some measure of proud. 

Din can’t put it off any longer. “I removed my helmet.” 

She extends a hand, inviting him to the low table. “Tell me.”

He kneels while she sets aside her work, each tool precisely in its place. The forge is nothing like the one on Nevarro—it’s bigger and smaller at the same time, far more light stretched across the room, the expanse of windows, and the forge itself is smaller. The sound of the fire, of sparking metal is the same, as is her tool bench along the wall. 

The silence in the corridor behind him is not, and it is wrenching.

“The Empire took the child,” he says, when she settles across from him. “A man named Moff Gideon.” 

“The name is familiar.”

“To find him—to find his ship, we broke into an Imperial base. The computer had to register a human face.” Mayfield said he didn’t see his face. Din appreciated it, and even believes him, but he’d raised other questions. Was it that he couldn’t remove his helmet, or that no one could see his face?

 _‘Cause they are different._

“And?” 

“I wore a stormtrooper helmet to break into the base. I took it off for the computer. There were people there, they saw me.”

“Are they still alive?”

“The—friend who helped me break in. He saved my life.”

She nods once, her hands loose on her thighs. “He is your foundling, Din Djarin. Should you have left him in the hands of one who meant him harm?” 

It’s the easiest answer he’s ever had. “No.” 

“Our survival is our strength,” she says. The words are cool water pouring over his head, pure relief relaxing his muscles. “This is the Way.”

“This is the Way,” he echoes, his throat aching. He takes his first truly deep breath since he’d known he would answer to the Armorer. “I took it off for the child. I didn’t—I wanted him to know my face.”

“You are a clan of two.”

“The Jedi saw.” The others were behind him, he didn’t think they’d seen—none of them had brought it up. He hopes his relief is not premature, but he has to be honest, especially with her. His voice is rough. “It was not a matter of survival.”

“He who cares for your son in your absence? And does he offer counsel and provide for you in turn?”

“Yes.” It’s all true, though there is something about the way she says it that sets a hook in his gut and tugs on it. Something he’s missing, like a trap about to spring. 

“He is _eyn aruetii_ , but he needn’t be.” 

“He is already a Jedi. He will not swear the Creed.” It felt like watching the mudhorn crawl out of its den. He can feel imminent danger, but he can’t translate where in this empty room the threat is coming from. 

“And you haven’t the time to teach it to him, if you are to take responsibility for the darksaber on your hip.”

Din’s hand goes to it automatically. He unclips it and sets it on the table. “Moff Gideon had it. I won it when I found the child.”

“And you know what it signifies?”

“Bo-Katan said—she said that the one who wields the darksaber is the rightful ruler of Mandalore.”

“You have met Bo-Katan?”

“She and her friends helped recover the kid. They claimed Moff Gideon’s lightcruiser to help them retake Mandalore.”

“A worthy cause. I cannot imagine she was pleased to discover the saber in your possession.”

“No.” He swallows back his frustration. “She wouldn’t take it.” 

“Hm.” The Armorer’s gold helmet is brighter here than it had ever looked in the covert. She seems to weigh her words carefully. “She is not as rash as you. Bo-Katan survived the Purge. She is well aware the power story holds in the galaxy. She wants the saber, she must win it. To take it from a Mandalorian who fought to rescue his foundling from the hands of the Empire, who is her ally and not an enemy, to take it purely for power—that is not a story that commands respect.”

Din’s hands fist against his thighs. “She only said it had to be a fair fight.”

“Bo-Katan is a fine warrior, but she is not as strong as you. Even with time to study you and your habits, she will not win a fair fight. You must decide your own future, Din Djarin. Tell me: Have we raised a worthy Mand’alor?”

The question sends a chill from the back of his neck to the tips of his fingers. She couldn't mean it. “I broke the Creed. I took off my helmet.”

“No one is infallible. Your penitence is to your credit.” She stands, the fur of her collar rustling in the recycled breeze from the corridor. ”You will marry the Jedi, and return to the Way.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hellmo.gif
> 
> how'd I do?


	4. belsavis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Paz said you would find us,” she whispers, her shaky breath clouding the air.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was absolutely overwhelmed by the comments you left on my last chapter--y'all are hilarious and affirming and it got me through a very, very hard week.
> 
> This update took me longer than expected, and not because I am now back at work (which I thought would be the reason), but because I have been watching the news for four days straight and doing almost nothing else. Anyway--my goal is two chapters a week, which at my current pace feels sustainable.
> 
> Thank you for reading, and enjoy 🖤

The Armorer is silent for a full minute after Din sets the package of coins on the table and explains the bounty for Moff Gideon. She shakes her head when he offers the credit chip. “It is just me, here. You are the Mand’alor. You must be prepared to help those on the Way who need you.” 

She shows him to a service elevator that is distinctly out of service and the shaft spits him out in a back hall on the main level. He steps onto the concourse between a casino and a brothel and ignoring a half-naked sales pitch, he heads for the dock. 

His helmet picks them up before he sees them; the matching rhythm of their footfalls, changing direction when he did, speeding up when he did, gives them away long before they make a move. 

They’re smack in the middle of a vendor lane when a crackle of a shockwand lights the air and he ducks under it easily, the current registering in the corner of his vision as he turns, grabbing the attacker’s arm and cracking his wrist in one smooth movement. The shockwand hits the floor and fizzles out before it can touch beskar. Din kicks it under a hoversled. Twisting the broken wrist, the zabrak chokes on the pain and hits his knees to relieve the pressure. Din’s blaster is already pointed at his partner, who’s stumbled back, obviously unprepared for their jump to go the other way, and Din shoots him in the stomach. 

His blaster is not on stun. 

He lets go of the broken wrist and steps over writhing legs, ignoring the laughter and jeers of the travelers who’d paused to watch. He weighs the pros and cons of ducking around the port, blowing off attention before he heads to the _Patience_ , against the possibility of getting jumped again—whether it’s the beskar or gossip from the Guild, he’s a target, he knew he would be, and he’d taken Luke’s ship anyway. 

Better to clear off before anyone can get a fix on him, he decides. 

The _Patience_ is squat and ugly on the pad, Din wonders if Luke will let him paint it, which at least would make the modifications look streamlined. He codes open the gangway and slaps it closed through the vent of compressed air as soon as he’s in the hold. Leave for take off is granted immediately upon request, and again Din is forced to thread his way through the tangle of traffic until he’s far enough away to safely focus on the nav computer. 

There are only two major cities on Belsavis and he picks the one he’s heard of before, Plett’s Well, and the nav computer calculates a handful of hours to get there. Setting the course, Din turns on autopilot and calls Luke. 

The com isn’t answered, which worries Din for the half moment it takes him to realize it’s before dawn on Yavin 4. He records a short message instead. 

“I’m sorry I missed you. I found who I was looking for, but she’s as separated from the Tribe as I am. I need to chase down a rumor before I head back, but it shouldn’t be much longer. Tell Grogu I’ll be home soon.” 

He sends it before he can talk himself into deleting it, he says too much, but what does he matter? He doesn’t want Grogu to think he’s abandoned him or been hurt when he doesn’t come back on time. 

Belsavis has an unstable atmosphere, which Din discovers after the ship is struck by lightning three times in quick succession in a set of clouds that hadn’t appeared volatile from the exosphere, the dashboard sparking and setting off alarms in all corners. The ship buffets wildly in the turbulent air; he lets loose every curse he can remember as he tries to hold steady and reboot. In the corner of his vision, a heat flash bursts through the viewport—a cargo transport catching fire some six hundred feet away and Din sets his mind to solving the problem as fast as he can. He needs to land, even if all his readings are down. He’s never flown the Patience without its automated landing sequencing—a move he had only just recently failed in the _Razor Crest_ , which he’d known much better than this. 

A crack of thunder drops the _Patience_ out of the clouds, his stomach seizing into his throat as he fought for a stable pocket of air, and suddenly he sees landing spires in the canyon of black cliffs. The base of the canyon is full of fog, but the spires are lit, and he hails the tower for a pad. 

The _Patience_ lands with a hard thump, bouncing Din in his seat. Sweat trickles down the back of his neck and he lets out a shaky breath, looking over to the co-pilot’s seat before remembering—Grogu isn’t here. 

He’s safe, though—this isn’t like the other times Grogu’s been gone, this is different. He’s safe, he’s with Luke.

Luke.

Just the thought pulls his gut into a tight knot. He can have what he wants—his clan, his Creed—he just has to…trap Luke into a life with him. And it is a trap, tailor-made, because he knows Luke, Luke has been telling him stories since the day he arrived. Luke says yes to people who need help, is always ready to sacrifice everything.

Din doesn’t want to be one of his rueful stories. He wants—

Well. He wants. That’s really where the problem is. 

He pays the pad manager to reboot the system, and only learns that a Mandalorian was seen on Spaceport Row fighting with a Hutt smuggler and then gone. Din nods his head and decides to head for the Row anyway, to see what he can see, which in the canyon is very little. The fog obscures everything more than a few feet in front of him, but he follows the directions to the stairs carved up the cliff wall and soon finds himself out of the mist. 

The terraces up the cliff face remind him of the rice fields in the Abraxas system, if the rice fields had been carved from black stone and full of prefabricated buildings crammed together. Spaceport Row is low on the cliff face, thankfully, and a far more organized sense of commotion compared to Dravian Station. 

Spaceport Row has everything from flower shops to tailors to farm stands to tech shops. He’s only a few blocks down when his armor takes on a layer of frost, despite the heating columns fogging the street and bleeding the icicles hanging from shop signs. He sees the familiar faces of a HoloNet News team through the window as he moves down the street broadcasting some ostentatious gathering from Coruscant. He isn’t distracted enough to miss the moment two children burst out of the store he just passed. He’s only half-turned when they’re throwing themselves at him. 

Din freezes, immediately assessing the surroundings, but Belsavis is cold and its visitors move quickly about their own business. Both children talk at once, and it takes a moment to understand them through the shattered breathing and crying. He pushes them back a bit and takes a knee. The girl’s dark skin and close cropped hair reflect all the lights of the street, her brother’s blond hair lank enough to make Din realize they haven’t bathed in some time, their long shirts stained with sweat.

“Paz said you would find us,” she whispers, her shaky breath clouding the air.

It hurt to speak, he wipes the tears off their faces before they can freeze. “I am sorry it took me so long.”

They’re gaunt and tired, and they jump to flinch behind him when the door they just blew threw crashes open again to a shopkeeper droid. “You must pay for that!” 

Din stands up. “How much?” 

The droid leans back. “Four credits.”

He pays the droid and turns back to the foundlings. “What did you take?” He was probably missing a lesson here, but he wasn’t going to scold them for stealing— “Bacta patches?” 

“Paz is sick,” the boy whispers. “He’s red and hot all the time and…”

“He thinks we’re still in the covert,” she finishes.

“Are you safe?”

She nods, then tips her head, “We ran out of rations.”

“We’ve been catching frogs, though,” the boy jumps in, “so we’re okay.”

Din is glad they cannot see his face. He knows all children did not eat frogs, and yet—

He takes a gathering breath and hands the boy his credit chip. “You will go buy food for everyone. You,” he turns to the girl, “will take me to Paz.”

She takes the bacta supplies from her brother and grabs Din’s hand. The boy runs down the street. It’s only when she starts leading him off the road that he realizes she’s allover shaking. With a curse he pulls her under his cloak, trying to keep his distance, sure the beskar is radiating cold. She pulls him to the edge of the terrace, to an orchard of fat trees and a barn that looks like one hard storm would blow it off the edge. 

She slides the door open only as wide as they need to get in, and suddenly Din is pinned down by a dozen sets of eyes before the barn explodes with his name. Small hands grab at him, pulling him inside and clinging to his waist. One of the older foundlings pulls the door shut behind him, blocking out the worst of the wind, but it’s still cold in here. 

The barn is freezing—he can see the frost coating the walls. There are piles of blankets clumped together in the middle of the room around a single light source.

Din runs a hand over all their heads, some wearing their helmets but most in a pile by the wall. The girl who brought him in sees him notice. 

“They got too cold, they hurt our skin,” she says. 

The foundlings only wear them for practice, to get used to the weight and vision, only training in full armor when they’re older. They don’t have the undercoat that sits high on their neck, or a cloak for padding, like Din does. His helmet tells him their body temperatures are less than optimal, though not as bad as he’d feared. 

“It’s alright. That was smart,” he says, because he doesn’t know how to wipe the anguish off her face. “Survival is our strength. This is the Way.”

“This is the Way,” they echo back, and something relaxes through the foundlings. 

Din gets over to Paz, who hasn’t stirred. His chest plate is leaning against a post, heavily dented. One of the foundlings pulls back the blanket, which Din realizes is actually Paz’s torn cloak, and Din sees bruising of every color over his swollen ribcage, with a scabby cut searing red at his side. He pulls off his gloves and runs a hand over the skin—hot, they were right—and gently palpates the area, which gets Din his first reaction. 

Paz’s helmet rocks back and forth, his voice through the vocoder nothing but garbled nonsense. 

The girl has sent the supplies in a line by their makeshift bed. “The droid said this first,” she hands him an antiseptic cleaning cloth, and Din applies it dutifully. It won’t be enough, he can see the red lines swelling from the cut; they’ll need a surgery droid, some of this skin is dead, and he’s not sure if he’s better off looking for one here or Dravian Station. Either place is going to raise too many questions. He uses a second antiseptic wipe to break up the scab, and Paz grows more agitated, his hand coming up to push him away. It’s a relief to see him moving, though he settles down quickly when Din seals the thin bacta patch in place. 

“Your brother will be back with the food soon.” The foundlings had all been quiet while he worked, but that composure shatters. Too many questions come from all quarters and Din holds up both hands, more in surrender than in command, but they quiet down immediately. “I’m not sure what he’s getting, but he’ll be here soon. Paz’s wound is more serious than a bacta patch is going to be able to handle. I’m going to get you out of here as soon as I can, but first we need to get a droid, so—we’re moving to my ship as soon as your brother comes back and everyone has eaten.” 

“It gets colder when it’s dark,” one of the little ones says.

Cold is cold, and the kids were all various shades of freezing. He nods at them. “As soon as your brother gets back. We’ll eat while we walk to the spire, alright? My ship is warm.”

“What about Paz?” 

“I’ll carry him.” It would be painful for Paz, but hopefully he’d remain only semi-conscious.

Almost the same moment he gets them all nodding along with the plan, the door squeaks open and their brother slides in. He has the credit chip in his fist and his arms trembling with bags of dark bread and sweet fruit—not what he would have picked up, but not the worst the kid could have done—and nutrient water, which he hadn’t thought of.

“Bread first,” he says in the voice that makes Grogu stop and listen. “I want you to count to three between every bite. Everybody up. Have all your things?” 

They had no things, but everyone grabs a blanket and most of the older ones grabbed helmets from their pile. Din counts fourteen kids in all, and he points to the one who brought him here. “You know how to get to the spires?” She nods. “We’re Spire 9, pad 6. You lead the way, I’ll bring up the end with Paz. Can we get there without going down the main roads?” All the kids nod. “Alright, good. Where are we going?”

“Spire 9, pad 6,” they repeat.

“Good.” He bends over to tie Paz’s cloak around his torso. Pulling him vertical jerks him awake, and Paz wakes, struggling hard—hard for semi-consciousness, hard as in it’s a surprise, not as hard as Din knows Paz could fight him, and the uncoordinated movements are another winch of worry across Don’s chest. “Paz— _Paz_!” 

“Din?” His voice sounds so far away.

“You’re alright, I’m getting you out of here.”

“Din,” he sighs, his helmet sinking forward to kiss Din’s before his entire body relaxes into his grip, Paz’s helmet sinking to rest against his shoulder. “Knew that hunting had to be good for something.” 

The bite of the words is too slurred with relief to mean anything, but it’s lucid. “You’re not doing well, _vod_.”

“Hurts to breathe.” 

“Well then you should stop.” The sarcasm is automatic, mostly toneless, but Paz chuckles into a wet cough, and Din pushes him upright again to secure the cloak. “Are you ready?” Din asks, though the answer doesn’t matter. He has to get the kids on the ship. 

Thankfully Paz nods, one of the foundlings picks up his dented chest plate, and they can leave the barn behind them. 

\------

The pad manager is done in side the _Patience_ by the time they reach the pad. 

Din unloads all fourteen foundlings into the _Patience_ before they’ve finished chewing their way through the meilooruns. He cranks up the climate settings, shows them the refresher, and gets all the bunks unfolded. There are four in the crew quarters, six in the hold, which should leave them five short but with the foundlings clinging together they seem to have extra. 

Din seals the gangway behind him and takes a deep breath, stealing himself against a yawn, before he heads back to Spaceport Row in search of a droid, which only takes visits to two vendors before he finds a 2-1B medidroid that the health center sold off for the newer model. He doesn’t blink at the cost for the droid or refreshing its medical supplies from the clinic—he picks up hygiene supplies too and a simple medpack, just puts it all on the counter and moves as quickly as possible to get the droid back to the pad. 

The droid introduces itself to the foundlings even as Din urges it up from the cargo hold to the bridge, from the bridge to the crew quarters, dumping the bags on a chair as they pass. There are four freshly washed foundlings sitting in the common area talking quietly, and they stop once the droid lumbers up. 

Din opens the door and lets the droid enter first. “This is your patient.”

“Oh dear, oh dear,” the droid buzzes, and begins pulling at Paz’s cloak with its pincers.

“He follows the Way of the Mandalore. He cannot take his helmet off in front of any living thing, do you understand?”

“ _I_ am not a living thing!” the droid says, as if this is a revelation—which, to be fair, last time it had been. 

“Right. If you take his helmet off you must lock the door. You must put it back on him before you leave the room, do you understand?”

“Yes, Master.”

“I’m not your master,” Din says shorter, and he presses the button to slide the door closed before there are any more questions. The kids at the table are watching him closely, so Din makes sure to acknowledge them. He’d never had much to do with the foundlings once he started hunting. His place had no longer been in the covert, but working above, and he had been a stranger to them. “I’m going to get more food, and as soon as the droid is done we’re taking off. The Armorer has a covert set up nearby, you’ll be home soon.” 

They melt into their seats and he heads back down to the hold and repeats the same thing to the others, then it’s out in the cold again. He jogs to the grocer he saw on the Row, antsy about leaving the children with no adults to protect them. They are all trained for the Fighting Corps, but they’re still small, as well as tired and malnourished. He wishes, suddenly and acutely, for Luke—for that moment when he’d realized he could leave Grogu with him in the market and not worry. 

He buys balanced rations, nutrient fluids, and after a half second of debate, sweets. A carton of fresh fish eggs makes him sigh loudly enough for the grocer to ask if he’s alright. 

“I’m late,” he says, which he absolutely is not what he meant to say, but he has lost control of his mouth. “These are my son’s favorites,” he adds, pointing. _My son_ , the words still leave a trill on his tongue when he says them. “I’m afraid they’re going to be upset with me.” 

“Well, better bring him his favorites then, eh? And you can never go wrong with flowers if you’re worried about your reception. My wife’s just across the way, sells the brightest blooms.”

That’s—no, no this is not what he wanted.

“‘Course, flowers don’t work for me anymore—“

“I still have a trip to make, I don’t think flowers—“

“Well, you’ll bring the ones in a pot then, won’tchu? I’ll just scan this out for you and you can go and see. My wife’ll know what you need, don’t you worry.” 

Din is very worried, but not about flowers. Still, the man checks him out, eggs included, and he doesn’t manage an escape before he’s called across the way, and then it would have drawn more attention not to go over, and before Din knows it he has a pot of white pointy flowers called starblossoms. 

He supposes, if he is bringing Grogu two gifts, he should at least bring Luke something. Especially if he’s going to—ask. Which he’s not, because Luke would say yes. Or something. He’s so tired his thoughts are like eels, slipping his grip before he’s finished with them. And Luke spends most days out in that overgrown mess of a garden, so flowers make sense. He puts the pot in the co-pilot’s seat, belting it into place.

It makes sense. 

\------

Dravian Station’s traffic makes Din curse enough that Paz laughs at him from the gunner seat, the noise fuzzing through the vocoder. Paz’s fever is gone, his appetite returned. His ribs are stitching themselves back together after a heavy spray of bacta, the black bruises receding to garish yellow. He’s able to stand in his armor, though the foundlings hover to lend support as he moves carefully down the stairs. 

Shepherding everyone and the droid into the Armorer’s covert, watching them breathe deep as the door locks behind them, racing to hug the Armorer, to run and open every room and explore every hall, it should have been everything he needed: the foundlings returned, a covert rebuilt—but it was only most of what he needed. 

He wants to go home. It isn’t this new covert, however much he knew it should be. Home is Grogu, in his hammock over Din’s bed in the _Razor Crest_ , and if he can’t have both of those things, he can have the most important one and that is all that matters. 

“I have your com, should we require you again,” the Armorer says. 

“Yes.” It's a relief that she does not expect him to stay. “If you hear any more rumors…”

“You will be informed. Here,” she says, and Din holds his hand out automatically, “for your clan.”

The pieces that clink in his hand are sigils made of beskar, the mudhorn is suspended in the ring only where its horn, neck, and jaw touch, each only as big as a calamari flan coin. Two of them. 

“He hasn’t agreed.” He doesn’t like the tight anticipation the idea of Luke wearing his clan symbol sparks. It’s too easy to picture it pinned to his robes. 

She is already turning away, back to the forge. “I am sure you will be persuasive.”

Din fists the sigils. His teeth ache from holding back _And if I’m not?_ as he watches her walk away. He doesn’t want to close himself in the forge only to hear the inevitable consequences. 

No one had ever been expelled from the Tribe as long as he’d been in the covert, and he can’t help but hear Bo-Katan’s _a cult of religious zealots_ in the back of his mind. It’s something he needs to discuss with the Armorer, but he knows it wouldn’t solve anything. Turns out there is more than one Way of the Mandalore—he wasn’t going to abandon the Tribe for Bo-Katan’s version of the creed just to get out of wearing his helmet. The thought was repulsive; it grated on his honor—honor Bo-Katan and her cohort didn’t have, or only had when it was convenient. 

People reneged on deals with him all the time. He doesn’t know if it’s bounty hunting, or the Outer Rim in general, but the galaxy is just like that. His sense of who to trust is better than when he’d started, but sometimes there is just no avoiding it and usually he ended up killing someone. 

To have a Mandalorian change the terms on him though—that had burned. It had been a day for revelations, on top of everything else.

It’s only when he’s back on the _Patience_ , settling into hyperspace with an eighteen hour course to Yavin 4, flower pot belted into the seat beside him, that he realizes he has nothing to do now but think about Luke.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have officially read too much wookiepedia. I picked Belsavis and then when I was like “what animals can you eat on belsavis” wookiepedia was like, “these poisonous things, or: frogs” so I had to work it in, I HAD TO, same goes for the flowers. Wookiepedia made me do it.
> 
> Also, if it wasn’t clear, the Paz helmet kiss was a kiss of *relief* and not sexual; this is FIRMLY a DinLuke fic.


	5. yavin 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I have to live with it,” Luke says. “I saw your face and—ruined you.”
> 
> “No—you get to live with saving me. I’m the one who has to know, forever, that I trapped you into this.”
> 
> He wants to shake him. He settles for stepping closer, but he’s shorter than Din and nowhere near as commanding. “It’s not a trap if you’ve _explained it_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I put off uploading because these scenes stressed me tf out. I hope they came out alright! I am still catching up on comments, I am so incredibly overwhelmed by how supportive you all are 🖤 I appreciate your encouraging words!!! 
> 
> You can have some emotions, as a treat.

The sound of the ship cuts through the rainstorm that’s been hammering the school all afternoon. Grogu immediately fumbles to his feet, babbling his happy noises and pushing demands through the Force that Luke has no problem meeting. 

Scooping the little one up, they head to the front door. Relief unfolds as he watches the _Patience_ touch down across the lawn and he doesn’t mind the warm rain as he walks to meet it. 

Three days shouldn’t have felt like as long as they did. Luke spent the mornings showing Grogu how to control two objects with the Force at once, and while he had the hang of _holding_ two objects, moving them was—a work in progress. Luke had a bruise on his shoulder where one of their focus rocks had hit him, and he wasn’t entirely sure it hadn’t been on purpose. Their training bond is present, but still fragile and Luke had seen enough of the darkness in Grogu’s memories not to force it. He’d taken the toddler through the forest by the school after their meditation practice, setting him loose on the critters there, but it all came rushing back when he went to put Grogu to bed in the empty room. 

He’d moved the little bed into his own and they’d fallen asleep to the sound of rain. Luke had woken to a small weight curled up against his back and a message from Din, short and vague and played four times before Grogu was finally willing to do anything else. They hadn’t woken up to a message this morning, and they’d both been waiting for one, their meditation unfocused and anxious. 

Grogu kicks to be let down the moment the compressed air hisses to open the gangway. Luke sets him on the wet grass and watches him toddle-run towards his father. 

Din for his part, stops short at the top of the ramp, satchel in one hand and—flowers? He meets Grogu at the bottom of the ramp and scoops him up. “What are you doing out in the rain?”

His voice is low and soft and Luke lets Grogu burble, unable to restrain a smile at the serious nod Din gives him.

“Were you good for Luke?” He looks up, and Luke nods. 

“He was perfect. Can I—take something?” he asks. Between the child and the bag and the pot, Din looks overwhelmed. 

“Oh. This is for you.“ He juggles the pot over. The white flowers are spiky stars with dark green leaves. “I thought you could—put them in the garden, or something.” 

“Thank you,” he says, and he knows his grin is too big, but—flowers. The Mandalorian brought him flowers. It was impossible to believe and too good to be true. “They’re beautiful.” 

“ _Pfft_.” Grogu’s claws _tink_ against the beskar when he pats at Din’s helmet. Luke laughs at the small wave of disdain and jealousy. 

“I’m sure he didn’t forget you. Let’s go inside.”

They walk back through the rain, Din reassuring his son that _of course_ he has presents, he has _two_ presents, and Luke is glad to be holding the pot as it keeps his hand from reaching for Din’s. 

Inside, Din puts his satchel on the table and pulls out a small carton of fish eggs, and Luke has to laugh at the awe on Grogu’s face, and small toy frog, which Grogu immediately tries to stuff in his mouth. 

“Did everything go okay?” Luke asks, taking a seat. He’d been gone almost two days longer than Luke thought he would be. 

He nods, shakes his head, then nods again, setting Grogu on the table and falling into a chair with a sigh. “It was easier than I expected.”

That doesn’t explain the head shake. “What was the rumor?”

“A member of the Tribe was spotted. I found him, and the foundlings—or the foundlings found me. He was wounded. I’m not sure when, probably at some point after the covert fell. It got infected, and they couldn’t…” he trails off, then adds. “I was the face of our Tribe. No one else left the covert. He got the foundlings out, but they didn’t have anything—any money or supplies. I should have been looking for them sooner.” 

“But you got there in time,” he double checks.

“He’ll heal. They could have died,” he says, his hands curling into fists on the table.

“You didn’t ignore them. You went as soon as you were called—you followed a rumor as soon as it reached your ears. Were you supposed to search every planet in the Rim?” 

“Yes,” he snaps. “Yes, I should have been looking—“

“You were being hunted to!” Luke interrupts. “What good would it have done to put them in the path of the Empire? You couldn’t have known,” he says. “You went as soon as you did.” 

Din looks at Grogu, who's watching them both while eating his eggs. “Paz and I came up together in the Fighting Corps; his clan is one of the oldest and he is the last of it. It would’ve been—“ He seems to struggle picking a word. “A tragedy, to lose him.” 

Luke thinks it would be a tragedy to lose any of them, but he tries to understand what Din is say. He feels a flicker of disappointment, and crushes it ruthlessly. 

“You and Paz were close?” He’s not sure how to—ask; it shouldn’t be his business, and Din is the most private person he’s ever met, except Luke desperately wants to know. 

“The Tribe is not large,” Din says. “And we lived in seclusion, so, yes. We were close.” 

That didn’t answer his question. “Were you together?” he asks bluntly.

“Oh.” Luke can’t read anything into Din’s helmet. “Not really. He doesn’t like me very much.”

What was _not really_?

Din goes on before he has to dig more, which Luke thinks is a first. “I was chosen over Paz to leave the covert. Paz was in charge of training the foundlings and the Fighting Corps.”

“And he got them all out.”

Din nods. “They’re safe now. They made a mess inside the ship, though. I’ll clean it up.”

“It can wait,” Luke says. “It went okay with your leader?”

“It was fine,” he says shortly, and even Grogu picks his head up from the eggs at his tone. The Force begins to spike off Din in too many things at once—frustration, anxiety, fear, resignation.“No, it just…wasn’t what I wanted to hear.”

“What did she say?” He’s prying, he knew it, and that it was none of his business, except that he desperately wants to know. 

Din sighs, the resignation welling over everything as he reaches under the table and pulls something from his belt. 

“But that’s a lightsaber!” Luke takes it from his hands immediately, turning it over. The metal was clearly well cared for, but there were scratches even buffing couldn’t take out of the hilt. “Where did you get it?”

“I won it in combat. From Moff Gideon.” 

He didn’t sound nearly excited enough in Luke’s opinion. He hits the switch, and the blade that hums to life is nothing he’s ever seen before. It’s _black_ , impossibly, a crack of void between them, and where every lightsaber Luke has seen was rounded this one is bladed like a sword: flat with a tapered tip. 

Grogu lets out a whimper, his ears pressed all the way down, and Luke turns it off immediately. “I’m sorry, it’s okay,” he reassures him, and he hands Grogu his frog for good measure before turning back to Din. “I can teach you how to use it.” 

“I don’t know if I want to use it.”

Luke smiles. “They’re not that scary.” 

“The darksaber is wielded by the Mand’alor.” Despair begins to well up in his Force signature, even though his voice stays steady, as well as something heavier. “I don’t think that can be me.” 

“What does that mean?” he asks. “Mand’alor?”

“ _Brr?_ ” Grogu purrs, pushing himself against Din’s arm.

“The Mand’alore is the leader of the Mandalorians. They’re—the king of Mandalore.” 

“That’s—“ Incredible. Astonishing. Something out of a wonder tale. He can see it too, this stalwart, honorable man as a beacon for his people. Luke sees it so easily. “So— _you’re_ a king?”

“I don’t want—I can’t be the Mand’alore,” he says. The resignation pouring off him in waves is joined by determination, almost loud enough to drown out what Luke finally recognizes as grief. But he doesn’t sound sad. 

“Why not?”

“I took off my helmet.” 

Luke looks at Grogu, whose staring up at his father and making the softest of keening noises. Luke can’t tell if it’s because Grogu has picked up Din in the Force or because he knows what’s coming. He makes himself ask. 

“What does that mean?”

It’s almost a full minute before he answers. Even though the metallic filter of the helmet can’t hide the tightness in his voice. “It means I can’t be a Mandalorian anymore.” 

\------

Grogu’s anguish is sharper than Din’s when he pushes up from the table and walks to his room in silence. It’s _no, no, nononono_ echoing in Luke’s head from the bond, and Luke picks up the baby, pulling him to his shoulder. “It’s alright, we’ll fix it, it’ll be alright.”

He’s sure Din didn’t mean to blame his son—Din wouldn’t do that. Was his son never supposed to see his real face? That didn’t seem possible. And—there were Mandalorians who took off their helmets! Boba Fett, in the cantina—Luke is missing something, he’s sure of it. There were a thousand situations where a helmet might come off, and they were just supposed to walk away from their entire lives? Their families, their clan? 

There’s a _thunk_ from Din’s room and Grogu makes an anxious noise. Grogu pushes memory after memory to him: of Din heroic, of Din protective, of Din trying so hard, and Luke realizes—in all of them, every memory, Din is in his helmet. 

“So he really can never take it off?”

His ears flick back and forth, unsure, and Luke tells him. “There will be a way to make this right, I promise.”

But Grogu isn’t soothed, and it’s been three days, so Luke knocks on Din’s door. “Grogu wants you.”

He remembers Din’s reaction when he asked how the trip had gone, torn between a nod and a shake—surely that wouldn’t have been his reaction if his tribe had cut him off entirely. 

Din opens the door, and Grogu immediately makes the lunge. The grief pooling around him doesn’t seem quite so deep when he catches the child. Relinquishing him, Luke says, “Tell me what your leader said exactly. If she sent you after more of your tribe, she can’t think you unworthy of being a Mandalorian. There must be a way to fix it.” 

“It’s not that simple.”

“There are Mandalorians who take off their helmets, though—Boba Fett—“

“He is not a Mandalorian. His father was a Mandalorian. Boba Fett is— _dar’manda_ , he is not on the Way.” 

That—stumps Luke, before he realizes Din dodged the question. “What did she say?” 

It’s a long moment, and Luke resists the urge to fill the silence as it grows, and stares down Din’s vizor. It really is an unfair advantage, his face could be doing anything while Luke has to keep his under control, but he supposes he has nuances in the Force to listen to, which weighs things his favor. 

“I took my helmet off in front of an outsider, but if the outsider became part of my clan then—then I could return to the Way.” The words are rough and reluctant. 

“Grogu isn’t in—me.” The realization strikes like lightning. “You took it off in front of me.”

Din’s silence confirms it. 

He feels so stupid; of course he hadn’t been mad at Grogu. It’s Luke. Luke has seen his face, and this whole time he’s been acting like nothing was wrong, like Luke hadn’t trespassed horribly against him. 

“I wouldn’t have looked if I’d—“

“I know.”

“—known. I didn’t know I’m so—“

“I know.”

“—sorry. I’m so sorry,” he repeats, softly. “What can I do?”

“Nothing.”

But that isn’t true, or he wouldn’t have said it at all. “To join you clan do I need to—swear the creed, or something? I don’t know what that is.” He feels ignorant, in a way he hasn’t since first leaving Tatooine and joining the Rebellion.

“The _Resol’nare_ is not something you can swear too for me. It is something you have to do for you, and—“ he holds up a hand, stopping Luke before he can start, “—it takes time to learn. For most people it takes years.”

Luke thinks he’s underestimating his tenacity, but lets him finish. 

“You are already a Jedi. Isn’t it enough to bring one order back from the edge of extinction?” 

Not if it ruins one of the only friends he has. Whatever else Luke wants in the darkest corners of his heart—they are friends, first. Luke feels it slipping away, feels the Force growing colder around Din, like he’s drawing back from him already.

“It’s not fair,” Luke says. Grogu coos in agreement and Luke takes a deep breath, because he’s not going to cry now, except the burning in the back of his throat makes him think he is. Then…he looks at Grogu. Stares at his precious green face and his long expressive ears and his wide eyes and the little pouting mouth that can’t even speak words yet. 

“Grogu didn’t swear to the creed,” he says. 

“What?” Din answers, too fast by half and with a mild edge of panic that replaces Luke’s anguish with no small measure of anger.

“Grogu didn’t swear, he couldn’t have, but he’s in your clan.”

“I—adopted him,” Din says slowly, pulling Grogu up like he’s going to use the small body to shield himself.

“And now you can take your helmet off in front of him.” He doesn’t want Din to adopt him, he really doesn’t, but the Jedi teachings say he shouldn’t want what he does want from Din either, that he can never have it and stay true to the Light, and Luke has thrown out most of the teachings that involve starving pieces of himself, but he hasn’t done away with that one yet, it just hasn’t come up, but Din—if Din adopts him he could live without it—this—this is more important, and he’d still have Din. 

“ _No_ —no, I’m not adopting you.” Din takes a step backwards, looking around like he’s going to find an escape. “That’s not--how it works—“

“But, Grogu—“

“You don’t understand!” Din’s voice is loud—louder than Luke has ever heard it, but he has more than enough frustration to match. 

“Well you’re not _explaining it._ ”

“ _We’d have to get married._ ”

The wind on the shutters is the only sound in the house, even Grogu doesn’t move. Luke feels the breath freeze in his lungs, the moment impossibly long, stretching the space between heartbeats. 

“ _That’s_ what the Armorer suggested,” Din adds, his helmet turning to look—anywhere but at Luke.

And it sinks in, buzzing over him. _Married._ They could get married and fix—all of this.

“Alright,” Luke says, blinking. 

“ _What?_ ” Din all but chokes on the word. 

“I said alright.” Luke wants to laugh but the tension is still too cold for it. He won’t have to lose anything—he will get to see Din’s face and Din can still be a Mandalorian, Luke would have a partner, and he won’t have to be alone. Married is—so much easier than Luke expected. Now that it’s here, in front of him, on the table—he _wants_ —

“That’s—you can’t just—No,” Din stutters.

It’s Luke’s turn to seize up, the bottom of his stomach dropping out. “What?”

Din shakes his head, and he repeats vehemently, like it’s a curse, “ _No_.”

Din’s hand darts forward and hits the button beside the door, closing Luke out of his room. Luke takes a step back, and another, hitting the other side of the hall, unclear exactly—what—had been so objectionable—had been so impossible—humiliation drops the bottom out of his stomach and he retreats quickly to his own room, locking the door behind him. 

He has Grogu’s bed in here, which Grogu never slept in while Din was gone, and Luke should—he can’t give it back tonight, he does have some pride. Luke strips out of his robes and goes to the refresher, turning it on cold like it can chase the burn of embarrassment out from under his skin. He presses the heels of his hands to his eyes, pushing away any tears before they can form, and picks up the soap. 

He scrubs too hard, raising faint red welts, and it doesn’t bother him, which is—not a good thing, he knows he’s going to have to leave this shower and settle in to meditate until he can steady himself in the Force. He doesn’t want to be alone with his thoughts or worse—have Ben or Yoda visit and explain to him why this is for the best. 

Wet and cold and no longer on the edge of crying, no longer on the edge of anything, just numb, he sits down on his floor and it’s another cold knife through the ribs to realize—Din would rather not be a Mandalorian than marry him. 

\------

Luke avoids them for three days. He can feel Din coming to—Luke isn’t sure. There’s regret in his Force signature, but no less determination than before and oh, the determination had always been to—to reject him, which stoked the humiliation back up to a rising fire burning his face. Luke feels so _stupid_.

The Force makes it possible to avoid Din, when he begins to look for Luke the second day, and only barely. He almost catches Luke as he’s putting Grogu’s cradle back in their room, only Artoo’s greeting warns him, and it was all Luke’s control of the Force to levitate himself through the window and up, out of sight. He sits on top of the school for a minute, letting the wind pull at his cloak, looking at the clouds gathering for their afternoon storm over the trees, so regular this time of year you can set a chrono by it. 

Grogu calls for him through their Force bond, still so new and fragile, and Luke always answers, is always ready to help, but Grogu wants to help _Luke_ and Luke doesn’t know how to make him understand. All he seems to grasp right now is that Luke is upset and his father is upset and everything is different. 

It isn’t fair and it isn’t right, so the next morning Luke is in the kitchen when Din and Grogu leave their rooms. 

Din stops in the doorway. “Luke.” 

He finishes plating the fruit. “Grogu needs to meditate.”

“I—okay,” Din sounds relieved, and Luke realizes as he steps closer that, actually, he’s not prepared for this at all. 

He picks up his plate from the counter and hands it to Din, who takes it automatically, stopping where he is, a distance enforced. Luke doesn’t—look at him directly. He doesn’t have to, because Grogu leans for him, waves of bright happiness in the Force, breakfast with Luke, a pattern restored, and Luke takes him from Din, smiling as his little claws poke at his face, like, _where, have, you, been_.

Luke takes Grogu and his plate to the table, sitting him down to eat. Din stops in the archway to the kitchen and Luke steals himself for the excruciating battle that will be sitting across from him while prodding Grogu to inhale more than the meat on his plate, but after a frozen moment Din turns back to their room and Luke lets himself relax. 

Grogu settles happily in to meditate, sitting closer than normal, but Luke doesn’t mind. Grogu’s energy in the Force is a bubbly, warm ribbon that slips through Luke’s fingers as he tries to guide him through the practice. Grogu wants to show him everything he’d been up to in the last few days, how his father sat with him on the grass, how Grogu looked for Luke in the garden but couldn’t find him, and Luke sends an apology down their bond. He should never have left Grogu, it was—inexcusably selfish. A dereliction of duty. 

_I won’t do it again_ , he tells him. _I’m sorry_. 

And Grogu’s acceptance is immediate, the slight forgotten, like all it had needed was to be acknowledged to be washed away, and he’s on to fond memories of crunchy bugs. 

Luke feels the moment Din enters the colonnade, standing silent vigil just beyond the bounds of the meditation garden. He lasts for almost twenty minutes. Not meditating, just—sitting still on the grass, embarrassment prickling under his skin before he opens his eyes and looks at Din. 

“Can you go? Please,” he adds, feeling too short. It’s not Din’s fault Luke wishes the Force would reach out and swallow him every time the man arrives at his periphery. 

It’s only moment—barely a moment, though it feels impossibly long—before Din gives a stuttering nod and walks the rest of the way out of the school. 

Luke feels him walking over the lawn, can’t help but follow him, but he’s going to the Patience and knowing that, Luke lets himself relax back into the trance. 

\------

So he stops avoiding Din, which is easier and harder, because there hasn’t been any confrontation but he is constantly swallowing that prickle of shame from overreacting. Din isn’t just quiet in the house now; he is silent, and the difference is excruciating. Luke doesn’t fill it anymore—he speaks to Grogu, mostly in the Force, strengthening their bond, and tells himself that this is okay. It’s what he expected even, before he woke up to Din on Tatooine: he had been prepared to be alone. 

Grogu’s endurance is progressing, just very slowly, but he manages to stack all the rocks in the garden and happily knock them all down before he gives in to yawning and Luke brings him back inside, tucking him into bed. 

“Can I—talk to you?” Din asks, when Luke walks into the main room and what is apparently an ambush.

Luke nods. He can’t put it off any longer. 

“I need to apologize.”

“No, you don’t,” Luke says, running a hand through his hair. “It’s not your fault.”

He was Din’s—host, he supposes, for lack of a better word. He’d made Din uncomfortable and let his own feelings interfere with his teaching. How is Din supposed to trust him if he goes off and hides from confrontation?

“It—yes, it is.”

“No, I’m the one who behaved badly.” He burns to think about how he’d cornered Din in his own room. Din hadn’t brought it up for a reason; Luke had forced it out of him, and then Luke pushed without even asking why he hadn’t brought it up. 

“No, you didn’t.” The metallic hum to his words is almost alarmed. 

“I did. I made you uncomfortable. You’d tried to end the conversation, and I followed you to your room. That’s—“

“Stop it.” Din’s breathing is harsh through the helmet. “I knew you were going to do this.”

That is grossly unfair. “I’m trying to apologize.”

“Yes, exactly, none of this is your fault. It’s mine. I took off my helmet. I broke the Creed. It isn’t on you to fix this. I—” He’s not looking at Luke anymore, but at the ground. “Reacted badly, before. When I…”

He trails off and Luke prompts, “Proposed?”

“I didn’t propose.”

Luke waits for him to go on, and he doesn’t. Luke crosses his arms. “Is this about the darksaber?” 

“What?” He sounds genuinely confused, which is something.

“You said you can’t be the Mand’alore because you’re not a Mandalorian, but if you married me into your clan you would be, so—do you not want to be a Mandalorian?“

“Of course I do.”

“Then I don’t understand—I said yes!” Which, meant, of course, that the problem was him and Din didn’t want to say so. 

“Of course you said yes! You always say yes! To everything everyone asks of you—you take all of it on yourself. This isn’t on you. I did this, I made the choice. You don’t have to suffer for it.”

“Planning to make it horrible, were you?”

“ _Luke_.”

He snaps. “I have to live with it,” Luke says. “I saw your face and—ruined you.”

“No—you get to live with saving me. I’m the one who has to know, forever, that I trapped you into this.”

He wants to shake him. He settles for stepping closer, but he’s shorter than Din and nowhere near as commanding. “It’s not a trap if you’ve _explained it_.”

“You don’t get to—sacrifice yourself for me.”

“It’s not a sacrifice if I _want to_.”

“Damn it, Luke—“

“I get to make choices too. If you think I—do too much or whatever you point was—“ Din tries to speak but Luke runs over him. “—you can think so, but you don’t get to take away my choices. You don’t want to get married,” he says at a normal volume, drained and done with this conversation, “fine. Don’t pretend you’re doing it for me.”

“It isn’t your responsibility fix everything, Luke,” he says.

“I can fix somethings, and I can fix this. Why shouldn’t I?” Din doesn’t say anything, so Luke forces himself to, “It’s okay not to want me.”

“That’s not it,” Din says. “I—“

He breaks off, and Luke doesn’t force him to spell it out. His face is burning already. “It’s fine. Really.”

“ _No_.” Din is emphatic. “I do—like you. But you’re my friend. And this isn’t—a temporary measure, do you understand? My Tribe—the Creed….”

It is something of a balm to hear Din call him a friend. He smiles. Is that what he was worried about? Luke knows there are cultures that treat marriage as a temporary alignment, like a handfasting, but he’d never thought the Mandalorians would be one of them. “You are traditionalists, Grogu told me.”

“My Creed is not—flexible. There are others who are, but not my Tribe. Our word is binding. We could never get divorced.”

He says it like a warning, and Luke knows he means it, but it makes him more eager, not less. Luke would never have to be alone. Oh, he would go off and find padawans, and Din would go—find foundlings or Mandalorians or whatever was needed, he knows they wouldn’t be together all the time, but—if they got married, he might leave, but he would never leave him. 

Luke has been alone long enough to know the distinction. 

“Already planning to leave me, Din?” he asks softly. There is something tentative and electric unfurling beneath his rib cage, and Luke has to concentrate to keep his breathing from betraying him.

“Luke—“

“You think I don’t know how serious this is? Because—what? Because I’m decisive? My entire adult life has been serious decisions made quickly. I won’t regret this— _and if I do_ ,” he adds, before Din can protest, “it won’t be because of this. We were doing so well, before.” Luke wets his lips. “Weren’t we?”

Din’s hands fist with a creak of leather. “You’re too generous for your own good.” 

He really isn’t. Really, really isn’t. He gets something he hadn’t even known he wants, and Din is getting trapped in a marriage he never asked for to still be accepted by his people. He shakes his head. “So how exactly does it work? Does the—Armorer? Have to officiate?” 

“No,” Din says after a moment, his voice is quiet. “Mandalorians don’t have weddings. It’s—just the promise we make to each other, the marriage vow, and then it’s done.” 

“And then it’s done.” He could feel his heart picking up speed as he takes a final step closer. Din is taller than him by a handful of inches, he’s not sure how much of it is the helmet, but he will, soon. “I don’t know the words.”

He shifts his weight, and Luke can feel the moment Din’s eyes meet his, even through the helmet, that focus in the Force. “ _Mhi solus tome, mhi solus dar'tome, mhi me'dinui an, bal tome mhi ba'juri verde_.” The words come quickly, like they’re being pushed out of him into the quiet solemnity. “We are one when together, we are one when parted, we will share all, and together we will raise warriors.”

“We are one when together, we are one when parted, we will share all, and together we will raise warriors.”

There’s no noise but the light patter of rain on the roof and Luke is excruciatingly aware of every inch of space between them. They aren’t even touching just—breathing, in tandem. In the corner off his eye Din’s hand come up, the cool leather of his glove skating across the back of Luke’s neck and every nerve lights up as the fingers run through his hair and Luke swallows a gasp, but he’s sure he’s lost control of his face, sure Din can see—everything, but maybe not, maybe he’s too close, because in the next moment his helmet presses cold and smooth against his forehead.

Luke’s hands come up, one to a metal cheek and one of grip the shoulder strap of his breastplate. 

“We’re married?” Luke whispers. It feels wrong to break the quiet or speak louder than the rain, but if he doesn’t say something his heart is going to pound out of his chest.

Din nods, not moving his helmet from where he leans against Luke. 

“So, you can take off your helmet, now?”

It takes him a moment to pull away, and Luke’s grip on his shoulder tightens before Din’s hands come up and, with a hiss—it’s off. 

Luke’s hand goes back to his cheek, the opposite of beskar, warm and soft and rough with stubble and Din shudders, eyes closing.

“Sorry,” he says, but Din catches his hand before he can pull back and when Luke catches his gaze he can’t look away. His eyes are—so dark, he can barely see where the brown ends and the pupil begins, in the half-light of the room. 

“I’m just—“ His face is expressive without his helmet, brows coming together, he wets his lips. “—not used it it.”

Luke lets his hand settle again, his thumb skating over the unshaven cheek, Din’s shudders turning to trembles as he moves down his jaw. His hair is tousled, slightly damp from its captivity, and Luke doesn’t have to hesitate to run a gloved hand through it. 

The sound Din makes is halfway to a moan, his eyes fluttering shut before snapping back open.

“In Republic weddings,” Luke had only seen a few during the war, pilots unwilling to wait with death so close to the horizon, but he knew enough, “you seal it with a kiss.” 

He’d meant it as a tease, but the words come out too soft, reveal too much. He feels a blush catching fire to his cheeks the same moment heat swirls through the Force as Din’s eyes dart all over his face, before he gives a tiny nod and butterflies explode in Luke’s stomach. 

Luke pulls him down by his shoulder and meets him on his toes. The kiss is—perfectly off-center. His mustache is a tickle against Luke’s face, his skin tastes like salt, his lips are soft, and Luke can’t stop a grin from breaking into the kiss. Din huffs, and Luke feels it against his face, sending a trill down his spine.

There’s a hollow _clunk_ against the ground, and before Luke can look for it Din’s arm wraps around his back, pulling him flush against the hard lines of his beskar. 

_He’s so_ strong, Luke thinks as he kisses him again, the hand in his hair tightens, sending shivers down his back and he can’t stop the noise of pure need he makes. His blood has been replaced by lightning, everything hot then cold then hot again in brilliant, rapid succession. 

Din is a messy kisser, more passion than finesse, and Luke realizes with a bolt of arousal—he might be the first person Din’s ever kissed. The thought is exciting in a way Luke can’t articulate, and he drags Din’s lower lip between his teeth to hear his breath catch. 

He’s happy to be overwhelmed by it, to give himself up to the tide and Din’s sounds and the weight of him, until a ribbon of a question threads its way into Luke’s mind, and he breaks off gasping. Din makes a noise, lips moving down the line of his jaw. 

“We woke up Grogu,” Luke says. He’s embarrassed by how out of breath he sounds. He ends up with a wheezy laugh as Din draws back from him and Luke sends a vein of assurance—and only assurance—down his Force bond. 

Luke runs a hand through his hair. His lips feel sensitive, swollen, and he’s very grateful to have his robes. He picks up Din’s helmet from the floor and offers it to him where he’s still standing so close, his expression is tight, searching, his lips red and Luke hadn’t had a chance to think about it the first time, but he really is handsome. 

“ _Brr_?” Grogu is small and anxious in the shadow of the hall, head tipped and frog clutched tight to his chest. 

Din steps forward to scoop him up. Grogu drops his toy in favor of reaching for his father’s face. “I’m here.” 

Luke smiles again, the way he fits in Din’s hands. He pulls the toy frog to him and perches him on Din’s shoulder for Grogu to claim. He looks at Din, suddenly nervous. He didn’t know—what to say, if anything, but Din doesn’t leave him in suspense. 

“Luke and I got married,” Din says simply, and Luke feels the wings whirl to life again in his stomach. _Married_ , they are _married_. 

Din is his _husband_. 

Grogu’s questions aren’t answered, his soft burbles have a thread of anxiety that Luke doesn’t like. “It means we’re family,” Luke says. Grogu can’t articulate his questions, he doesn’t have the words for them, and Luke tries to parse out what he means. “It means your father and I are going to take care of you.”

Grogu doesn’t see how that is any different, except that his father is not wearing his silver face. 

“He doesn’t have to wear it with us,” Luke says, looking at Din, “we’re his clan now.” 

He understands that, anyway. He understands that his father’s real face is important, and that their clan is a mudhorn, and that his dad always comes back for him.

Luke runs a hand over Grogu’s head, the green skin so soft and wrinkled with the short white hairs that he can never resist ruffling. “No, you’re right,” Luke says, Grogu’s happiness lapping at his own like waves on the shore. “nothing’s really changing.” 

When he smiles at Din, whose signature is a complicated mix of happiness, relief, nerves, and still that earlier resignation, he gets the full effect of those dark eyes and a small nod in return.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They didn't kiss until after they were married and I don't know why but that felt on par for these space disasters. 
> 
> Wedding vow is slightly modified from the Legends version—“and together” isn’t in the original—but I read this in PepperPrints’ Separate Way (which, really, should be required DinLuke reading) and loved the emphasis, so I stole it!


	6. the great temple

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So—nothing has changed. 
> 
> Except now Din knows what Luke tastes like.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I couldn't get this up sooner! I was just, really tired so I went to bed instead. I hope it's worth the wait!

Din doesn’t like the idea of Grogu waking up in the school alone, almost as little as he likes the idea of training with the darksaber, so they move their sparring closer to the school during his naps between lessons. 

Din had been trained in all forms of combat, yet, somehow, dueling had not been part of the Fighting Corps regiment. He could handle the forms, but the weight of the darksaber—or rather, the fact it had no weight—was the difficult adjustment. He’d gotten used to the way the lightsabers cast ribbons of heat through his helmet’s sensors

Luke sheds his robe in the heat, his hair sticking to his forehead and the cord with the mudhorn hanging around his neck. Every time Din sees it he feels a swell of pride. 

_Nothing’s really changed._

It had hurt to hear it but he was right. They were—words. Just a promise. He has no doubt Luke will keep to it, but that doesn’t spontaneously make them in love. Their days have the same rhythm they did before—though he eats at the table with Luke and Grogu now, instead of alone in his room—and Luke hasn’t kissed him since their vows. They had eaten dinner, Luke had his R-unit turn on a holo to entrance Grogu while rain pounded the roof and echoed through the room. Then, finally, Luke had said goodnight and left Din to put Grogu to bed. 

So—nothing has changed. 

Except now Din knows what Luke tastes like. 

Luke makes a combination pass which—Din should know this one, Luke’s used it before, but he only manages to block the first strike with an angry buzz of blades, the second manages send the saber flying out of his hand. 

“You’re not paying attention,” Luke says, turning his blade over effortlessly.

“I am, I almost had it.” He trudges over to pick up the darksaber, the hilt wet from the grass. He always feels like it should be warm, even through his gloves, but it never is. 

Luke shakes his head. “I can feel your focus drifting.” He looks up at the sky. “Should be call it a day?”

“No,” Din snaps. “I need to learn to do this.”

“You’re not going to learn it stewing in frustration, either.”

“Practice is the only remedy to incompetence.” The Fighting Corps was rigorous. If your attention waned, they handed you your ass, they didn’t—call it a day. 

“You’re not incompetent,” Luke says, more patient than anyone Din has ever known, and Din finds it excruciating for some reason, “you’ve been learning for two days!”

“I’m not a beginner. I’ve fought with a blade before.”

“A lightsaber is completely different—the weight your body trained with doesn’t exist, the blade itself can hurt you as well as your opponent if you misjudge an angle—even in your beskar. Just because you’re not immediately an expert doesn’t mean you’re doing badly.” 

Din’s weight shifts. “It’s been a long time since I was a beginner.” 

“One more round,” Luke says, “I don’t think this form suits you. I’ll have to see if another would be better for you.”

“This isn’t the basics?”

“It is,” Luke agrees, “but as you said, you’re not a beginner.” 

He’s trained for too long to be considered a beginner, but stars knew there were probably beginners who were better at handling the saber than he was. He wonders if Bo-Katan had struggled to learn it, or if it’s just him, getting in his own way. He doesn’t like the feel of it in his hand. He spends his time fighting the instinct that something this light will give under Luke’s blows—never mind that it’s always held up—that Luke’s lightsaber will slice right through his and hit his helmet or burn through his neck. He can’t afford thoughts like that in battle, but he hasn’t found a way around them yet. 

Din hates the feel of the saber in his hand; something feels—off, about it. Like if he loses focus at any moment it’s going to bite him. It’s not just Luke’s lecture about knowing your blade and respecting its danger—he’d fought Gideon, he knew what it could do—he’d held dangerous weapons before. Something about this weapon felt wrong in his hand.

“If I win,” Luke says, “you’ll come with me to the Great Temple tonight.”

“I can’t come with if I don’t win?” Din asks. He doesn’t know what the Great Temple is—if it’s some sort of Jedi practice Luke and Grogu need to do, or some local god—but he doesn’t want to be left behind. 

“Of course you can, but this way I don’t have to feel bad about making you walk there.” Luke smiles. 

He holds his own for longer this time, almost a whole four minutes. He’s sure Luke is moving at half speed and Din’s frustration builds as they sweep wide arcs across the grass. The sabers spark and buzz in an uneasy kinship. Luke knocks his saber to the side and stabs at his beskar chestplate in a shower of light. He can’t help the way his heart drops before his brain realizes the armor will hold.

Din takes two steps back before he sighs and mutes the darksaber. He tries to get his breathing under control as Luke wipes his brow and picks his robe up off the ground. It was that moment of fear more than real exertion that stole the air from his lungs. 

Luke looks at him with a frown, so Din speaks before he can. “Exactly how far is this temple?” 

\------

The temple is a three hour hike through the jungle in the opposite direction as the town where they’d gotten supplies. Luke holds Grogu on his shoulder, keeping him there with a combination of the Force and little fingers pulling his hair. 

The Great Temple is apparently the only surviving Massassi structure on Yavin, a group of Sith warriors some thousands of years ago. Luke is surprised to learn Din doesn’t know a Sith Lord from any other kind of titled jackass, and his explanation that the Sith are antithetical to the Jedi doesn’t help at all, since Din still isn’t entirely clear what a Jedi is besides the—sorcery. 

Din doesn’t see the Great Temple until they’re almost on top of it. The ziggurat does stretch taller than the surrounding trees, from the ground it almost disappears into the low hanging clouds over the forest. It is—breathtaking, is the only word that can describe it. He’s never seen anything like it, the gray towering stone structuring stained with rain and moss and time. He had chased bounties into ruins before, but this isn’t a ruin, it’s still standing. 

He can make out the patterned ferrocrete of standard landing platforms, but they were eaten over by vines and and moss and jungle plants he doesn’t have the names for and Din is glad nature had gotten its revenge in the end.

Luke takes them in through the hangar blast doors, which open with a code he punches into the keypad, which wheeze open from disuse. Lights flicker to life through the hanger with the repetitive thumps of awakening generators. 

“I’ve been pulling things for the school—if you see anything you want we can take it—I have some naamite batteries charging here that we’ll bring back with us.” 

The temple feels like a tomb, even with the lights coming to life. There are fueling trucks and maintenance sleds scattered across the hangar, a mausoleum of astromech droids in various stages of disrepair hung along the rear wall and half a TIE lying listless. 

“How did you find this place?” Din asks.

“It was a Rebel base during the war—the first one I ever served on, actually. The Empire took it over after we had to abandon it, but they had to move out fast too, so, a lot of the supplies are still here. It’s where I get a lot of the tools I use to fix up the school.” Luke leads the way into the lift, pulling Grogu off his shoulder and letting him press the button. The lift lights have a yellow tinge that makes everything inside look sick. 

“This is—Sith?” It looks outdated, but it doesn’t seem that old.

“Oh, no, the Rebels—and the Imps, probably—made modifications to the structure—reenforced walls, added amenities, you know.” 

He doesn’t know. Or rather—he does: their covert in the sewers had obviously made significant improvements, bu that had been building something out of nothing. They hadn’t…destroyed anything to build it. 

The lift spits them out on a dusty half-lit floor, cords running across the hallway like escaping snakes. His heat sensors pick up nothing, but his teeth are on edge as they move down the hall. The walls were poured, not the block stone of the rest of the structure, and there didn’t seem to be any natural light. 

“I need to com my sister. The base has encrypted channels if you ever need them. Did you—“ he breaks off for just a second, running his gloved hand through his hair, “—want to grab the batteries? They’re right in here.” He opens the room next to them, a maintenance workshop. 

Din nods, sure that isn’t what Luke had been about to say even as he takes the bag Luke proffers. It’s a relief that he changed his mind—it is, there’s no reason for Din to read into it. He doesn’t want to meet Luke’s sister now. He is in no hurry to rush that eventuality, he’s never been good with polite diplomacy and he isn’t sure what he’d do with a princess and Luke’s stories about his sister haven’t helped. Their whole family is very confusing. 

He takes the bag Luke hands over and Luke sets Grogu on the ground to explore a new room of things to put in his mouth.

“I’ll just be in through the command center, if you need me,” he says, pointing through the wide arch into another shadow room.

“We’ll be fine.” Din watches Grogu pick up a wickdriver and put the handle in his mouth. “Do not eat that.”

Luke laughs and leaves them in the doorway. Din finds as he turns the corner, his heat signature fading from red or orange, that he does not like having Luke out of his sight in here. It sets—something—prickling the back of his neck. A clatter draws his attention inside the room, where Grogu has climbed his way into the drawer of a tool bench and grabbed another driver. 

A quick glance says that nothing in the drawer will kill the kid—probably—so he heads to the charging column in the far corner and swaps out of the three heavy duty battery packs with three clinking full-green from the column. 

This room would have been a goldmine for the covert back on Nevarro. They’d had a few sets of simple tools, but anything that required actual work had been pushed onto the Armorer. They hadn’t had a charging station—drawing that much power from the grid would have drawn too much attention, they’d barely even had light that hadn’t come from the gutter. 

He wonders if Luke would let him crate up some of this and bring it to the covert—well, not so much if Luke will let him, but if he’d be taking advantage of Luke by doing it. This place is caked in so much dust it’s turned to grime, and Luke had already filled a room at the school with tools and supplies. Besides, Din realizes, looking around the small room, this couldn’t be the base’s only maintenance shop. It’s far too small. 

So he hauls a pile into the middle of the room—not the charging column, since Luke’s actually using it, but a couple of spanners, a hyposheer, there is a powerjack and a fusion projector—he pulls everything that seems moderately useful for construction, but also small enough to carry. 

The temple would have made a great covert; it would have made a great school, though Din can understand why Luke might not want to live in it by himself. He lets himself think through the logistics of moving the covert to Yavin: more sun that the foundlings had seen in years, trees and the security of a military base, no neighbors and plenty of room, but he knows the Armorer will never consent to it. Taking over an abandoned base might be one thing, but a base that appears on both Republic and Imperial maps, that is connected to one of the most famous military battles in recent history? Not exactly covert. 

The pile he ends up with after his first pass around the shop is too big, really, but the shop is still bursting with materials so he doesn’t let himself feel bad about it. 

No, he doesn’t feel bad about the mess he’s made of the room, but he does have a bad feeling. The same one that’s pulled at him the entire time they’ve been in the temple. 

Din’s stomach begins a slow and inexorable fall as he looks to his left, at the tool bench—at the tool bench’s empty drawer—

Grogu is gone. 

\------

The encrypted com hub has acquired a new spiderweb since the last time Luke brushed it off, and he hopes that its spinner is far, far away. While the hub whirs to life, he thinks about Din and his darksaber.

He’d started with Shii-Cho because that’s where Yoda had begun training with him; it’s still his favorite, but it is painfully obvious the form gives Din far too much time to overthink. If Din were his padawan, Luke might be able to show him through the Force, but he isn’t. Luke can’t work against his nature, Din’s habits are engrained and effective; better to change the style of form.

He bites his lip. _Ben?_

It only makes him more nervous to feel his master in the Force so quickly, like he’s been waiting just out of sight. His Force ghost has no problem stepping through the spiderweb. 

_Luke_ , Obi-Wan’s smile unbends something in Luke’s chest, _you have made many decisions in the last few days._

_Yes_ , Luke agrees. That was certainly one way of putting it. _I wanted to ask you something._

_Why all my padawans break their oaths by getting married?_

_I never took an oath._ Luke wants to stand up, but that would only look petulant. _I told you I would re-found the Order in my own way._

_You did. I am only teasing, Luke. Ask me your questions._

_Din has a lightsaber, a Mandalorian one—_

_The darksaber. Yes, I know of it._

_I_ — It hurt to admit his failures, even to Ben. _I cannot teach him to use it. We don’t suit._

Obi-Wan’s head tips. _Your forms do not suit him, you mean._

Luke might be grateful for the blue cast of the com computer hiding his blush if his emotions weren’t already swirling in the Force. _Yes, that is what I mean._

_You have mastered two of the seven standard lightsaber forms and in those, found your strength. Your husband—_

Luke can’t stop a small catch in his breath hearing it out loud. 

—is likely one of the others. From what I know of Mandalorians, Ataru may be more his style. The fourth form offers little in the way of defense, but his armor will not require it. 

How do I learn it?

You cannot most accurately teach a form you are uncomfortable in. Ataru was the favored form of my master Qui-Gon; it is aggressive and acrobatic.

Two things Luke didn’t need to be told he wasn’t. 

_When the Order thrived, padawans would be sent to study under others to further their lessons and expand their scope. You do not have the option of addition teachers, but you may have their resources._

_Where?_ Ben hadn’t offered this before. Obi-Wan hadn’t offered much of anything beyond advice when it came to restarting the Order, it was Yoda who sent him looking for artifacts and texts of the Jedi. 

Ben is quiet for a moment, his meditative focus a soothing ripple through the Force. _The Caves of Masposhani were home to a training center for many centuries. They fell out of fashion before I was a padawan, but were never formally annulled. The planet is small and inhospitable—there is nothing of value in resources or location, and so the Jedi had it to themselves. You may find something there._

_Thank you, Master._

_Luke_ — Obi-Wan takes another quiet moment, the hum of the computer the only noise between them, before he meets Luke’s gaze. There is a directness there that Luke isn’t used to, and he isn’t sure he likes. _My greatest regret is that Anakin believed my support was conditional upon his obedience to the Order. I never spoke of my troubles, and so he never shared his. That, more than anything, was our downfall. If you wish you stay true to the Light, you must remember: you are not alone._

Obi-Wan fades before Luke can conjure up the words for a reply. Goosebumps sprang up in a wave hearing Ben say his father’s name. The holo’s blue ready screen is beginning to fade back to sleep and Luke is jerked back into what he came to this room for.

He inserts his encryption cylinder and calls Leia, waiting for it to connect. She might be in the Senate, or in a Senate party—she was always needed somewhere. 

As soon as he has that thought, the holo dissolves into her image. “It’s been a week. I assumed your prospective student’s family murdered you and left you for dead.”

“No, you didn’t,” he laughs.

“You drop everything and jump in your X-wing with no warning, and you don’t call for a week! It’s a perfectly reasonable assumption.” She crossed her arms, the long sleeves of her Senate robes tangling.

“I’m sorry,” he says, still laughing. “I found my student.” And his father. 

“And where was he?”

“An Imperial lightcruiser.”

“What?” He has a brief moment to appreciate actually surprising Leia. “Wait, Moff Gideon—that was you?”

“No, not me. The child’s father defeated him before I got there. I just took care of a few droids.” 

“Some father,” Leia says.

“He is,” Luke agrees. 

Leia’s chin comes down. “Luke…”

“He’s a Mandalorian,” he adds, before she can ask. 

“Really?” The quirk of her eyebrow makes it clear she’s letting Luke get away with it, and Luke knows to take what he can get. 

“He’s staying at the school with his son, when he’s not needed by his tribe.”

“Staying at the school? I thought it was supposed to be a secret.”

“It is,” Luke insists. “He’s not going to tell anyone.”

“Luke.” Her disapproval has begun to take over her face.

“His son is a baby, Leia. I couldn’t just—if I tried to take Ben from you, you would stab me.”

Leia’s brows furrow to match her frown. “Did he threaten you?” 

“ _No!_ ” Luke yells. He bites back his frustration and pinches his nose. “Can you trust that I do have some idea what I’m doing. I’m a good judge of character.” 

“No,” Leia says straight-faced. “You picked Han.” 

Luke hears a, “ _Hey!_ ” from off-screen. “Hi, Han,” he says.

“Hey, kid.”

“We were hoping to come around after the vote this weekend,” Leia says, “if you’re not too busy with your student.”

This weekend gave him five days to go to the caves and back. “That’ll be great.”

“I’d love to meet your Mandalorian,” Leia adds, stepping to the side to let Han into the frame.

 _Hahaha, oh no._ “I’d like for you to meet him too, and my student.” Luke smiles. “He’s adorable.”

“You’re seriously teaching this baby? Where were you when Ben was using the Force to throw things from his crib.” Han wraps an arm around Leia, who leans in gently, clearly wary of wrinkling her robes. Luke feels the sharp edge of jealousy. He wants _that_. That—simplicity. 

“Oh, Grogu’s fifty years old. It’s just—“ He’d never imagined about having to explain it. “—Relative age, he’s still a toddler.” Han’s confusion was palpable through the link. “You’ll see when you get here.” 

“Hm.” Leia taps two fingers against her arm. “What aren’t you telling us?” 

_I’m married_ , Luke thinks, but he chokes on the words, finally strangling out an, “I’ll save it for when you arrive.” 

She squints at him. “Hm.”

\------

Din lunges for the doorway. His sensors pick up the faint yellow of fading footprints, small smears of tiny uneven steps, and Din feels the adrenaline like ice chips in his veins as he takes another breath and follows them. 

They disappear into an elevator, which only goes up one level, and the footprints turn orange as the doors open. Din hears him before he sees him, the _da da da daaaadada_ of his little voice echoing through the cavernous space. 

Din runs the last few steps to catch him up off the floor, and Grogu falls over himself laughing, like he hadn’t just scared the shit out of him. 

“That was not funny.” But the admonishment only makes him laugh harder. 

Din tips his head back for another deep breath, stretching his neck. The walls have a faint green tinge to them, and he can’t tell if it’s moss or the kind of stone. Light stretches across the stone floor from five long windows at the far end of the room—the nave, if this was a temple. The windows are up a flight of stairs on a dais. The stone walls that angle out on either side of the hall had deep alcoves with their own long windows, but they are cut so deep into the rock they barely bring any light into the room at this time of day. 

It’s austere, which surprises Din. What he knew about temples and religion lends itself to pageantry, but he supposes the people who’d worshipped here had long since faded to stardust. 

He starts walking with Grogu towards the tall windows on the dais. The afternoon rain has passed, but the condensation on the window has not, leaving some of the view molted grey and blue and green and some crisp leaves in an unending expanse before them. Even on Sorgan, they hadn’t seen this much green. “This is quite a view, don’t you think?” 

Grogu’s noise is unimpressed, and Din has to laugh. “You have to admit, it’s better than Tython. It’s still standing, for one thing.”

Grogu makes the noise again and pats his shoulder. Din follows his gaze to a staircase that disappears up another level. He looks back at the elevator, at the long empty nave between the dais and the elevator, before Grogu pokes him again. “Alright, I said alright.” 

The staircase grows wet as they get to the top, the air far more humid, before it spits them out on an observation platform almost at the tip of the ziggurat. The dim light of a foggy and half-drowned day rolls out before them, the barest tops of the trees reaching their height in a deep green carpet at their feet. A flock of long necked whisper birds were soaring low over the canopy, their honks a far flung chorus. 

Din pulls off his helmet, desperate for just a moment to see this place without the extra data it gives him. 

Grogu wants to be put down, at least that’s what Din thinks the kicks are about, but he’s not making that mistake again. He shifts the kid higher in his arms and walks to the edge, where the steps of the temple jut out in moss-softened lines all the way down to those half-devoured landing pads. 

“This what you wanted to see?” he asks. He couldn’t have known this was up here, and yet Grogu knew exactly where he was going. Din tries not to let that throw him; surely it isn’t the scariest thing the kid has ever done, he picked up a rampaging mudhorn—but somehow this is the thing that runs him cold. 

And—he wonders who Grogu was talking to when he came out of the elevator. 

Din hears Luke before he’s even close, that distinctive tread running up the stairs. 

“Sorry, I got caught up. But you found the best part of this place.”

“It’s beautiful,” Din says, and Luke smiles.

“The opposite of Tatooine,” Luke says. 

“Is that why you picked here for your school?”

Luke laughs. “Yeah, maybe. I mean, no, the moon has a strong connection with the Force, which can make it easier to train padawans. And I have friends here, in case—“ He breaks off, and looks at Grogu. “In case,” he repeats. “But no sand was definitely a major point in its favor.”

Din nods. “I wondered why you didn’t pick the temple.”

“Too many people know where it is. I have—a number of enemies. I don’t plan to make it any easier to find us, it’s bad enough I’m on the same moon. Hang on, you have—” 

Din freezes. Luke reaches up and combs his fingers through his hair. The faint brush of his fingers trills against his scalp. 

“—Helmet hair,” Luke finishes. 

A noise halfway to a word gets trapped in his throat. 

“I need to leave for Masposhani. It should only be for a few days.” 

“Is it going to be dangerous?” Din doesn’t mean to sound condescending, but Luke grimaces.

“Not markedly. The planet is uninhabited.”

Din has been to a number of uninhabited planets that tried to kill him, but Luke goes on before he can say so.

“Will you stay here?”

“Here?” He looks down the stairs, the idea of stay here with its creeping animosity is not a pleasant one, but—

Luke laughs. “I meant the school. Will you stay until I get back? It should only be a few days.” 

“Of course.” He blinks. Did he really think he would have left Grogu with only a droid? 

“Thanks.” Luke’s hand snags his pauldron and Din is still looking at it when he comes up on his toes and kisses his cheek. 

It’s less than a heartbeat, but Din feels it his lips hot on his cheek. They rasp on his stubble and Din can’t help but watch them as Luke falls slowly back on his heels. 

“Sorry,” he says, a tentative there-and-gone smile skating his face. 

“It’s fine,” Din says quickly. 

“It is?” Luke’s smile is slower this time.

“It—yes.” Din surpasses the urge to clear his throat.

“I don’t want to overstep your boundaries.”

“Yes. I mean, no, you don’t—aren’t. Overstepping.” Din feels a blush claw its way up his neck. He takes a deep breath and it feels not dissimilar to throwing himself in front of the krayt dragon. “I like it.”

“ _Pfft_ ,” Grogu scoffs, his little hand pushing Luke’s chest back and Din thinks maybe he should’ve put the kid down after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for your comments!! I know I didn’t get the chance yet to respond to everyone last chapter, I figured writing this was more important 😅 Know that I read and loved and was motivated by everyone one and next chapter will be where this fit earns its E rating. *waggles eyebrows*


	7. masposhani

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “It’s been—“ Din sucks in a breath and lets it out just as fast. “—a while.” 
> 
> “For me, too.” Luke hasn’t had anyone in—years, since the Rebellion, and that precipitous turn from being Luke to being Luke Skywalker, and everyone had known about him and never wanted to know him—he had enjoyed the attention until he had noticed the difference. It didn’t have this—the vibrant heat in the Force, the waves of arousal that swirl around them, Din’s consuming attention. “We can go slow.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so, so sorry this took forever. It's, uh, *check notes* 6k longer than expected.

“What about it, Artoo?” 

Luke thinks Masposhani is his least favorite planet, and he’s been around. He knows he’s in a mood, sleeping in the cockpit is never fun, and waking up there after a nightmare was even worse. They are running behind and they haven’t even started. Ben suggested finding the caves through the Force, which would have been helpful maybe anywhere else but this Force-null hunk. 

[It's a shithole,] he beeps.

“I meant the com. Better signal?”

[Negative.] 

He’d checked in when they were running their search grid yesterday, the connection spotty from solar flares, but they hadn’t been able to connect at all since. 

It is truly desolate. The rocks have a distinct Force signature that he can sense only now that he’s standing on them, muted and still, and the lack of any other life on the planet makes Luke desperately uncomfortable. The Force moves between all things—not necessarily through all things—but he’s never really accounted for how much it was amplified by living creatures. Masposhani didn’t have any of those—its atmosphere was so thin the tiny planet didn’t even have weather as far as the X-wing could pick up and after two days flying around canvassing, they’d picked up a lot of nothing. 

Until he’d found the door. 

It is the faintest knot in the Force and if Luke hadn’t spent the better part of two days meditating on the planet, he doubts he’d have picked it up. He hadn’t even known that you _could_ shape the Force, much less contain it inside something like a door. 

It was a dilating security door set in the mouth of the cave. It didn’t have a panel or access point as far as Luke could tell, which meant opening it was tied to the Force signature. 

The problem was, the only thing here with a Force signature was Luke. He’d been trying to pull the knot apart for the last few hours, more or less, meditating on how to open it, sitting in the thick coating of grey ash that seemed to cover the whole of the planet. He touched it with his fingers when they first landed, and they were still tingling, the numbness only just receeding. He’s grateful there’s no wind to pick the ash up into the air. 

There was some lesson in the muting rock of a lifeless planet. He didn’t believe the Jedi would put a training school on a planet that would hurt them, but he hates the way it feels. It’s so thin around him that it feels like the vacuum of space—like the planet is sucking the Force out of him, instead of what he knows is really happening: he is the only thing sending ripples through the Force. He alone is moving in a still pool. 

And then it clicks, and he stops trying to move the knot that’s locking the door in place and instead casts himself through it, feeling the channels open and unbend and with an eerie hiss in the windless air, the door spins open. 

It’s a decon chamber. Big enough for his ship, if he wanted to tow it in, which he doesn’t, so he and Artoo are blown through a sonic into a small hanger, and Luke finds himself fighting off a yarn. It seems to be lit mostly through skylights, which are covered over with a muffling layer of ash. Artoo turns on his flashlight as he rolls ahead, past the two ships in the hangar. Pre-Imperial, as far as Luke could tell, but the filtration system in this place was incredible, because he didn’t think there was a spec of dust anywhere. 

“Artoo?” he calls. He can’t feel the droid in the Force—he can’t feel the Force around the droid. Nothing in his life had ever so clearly manifested Yoda’s lesson on Dagobah. The caves are clearly refined, but they left unfinished, with deep turns and rough hewn ceilings. He finds Artoo in what must have been an entrance hall of some kind, a Force sculpture of three meditating Jedi—a human, a Wookiee, a species Luke doesn’t know—sits in the center of the room hewn in grey stone, barely lit from above. He hears Artoo chirping, his beeps distorted from a large space, and he heads in to find a mess of some kind. Not large, but Luke thought a couple dozen people could fit comfortably at the long table.

The mess leads off to dorms—some of which still have unmade beds, and a shiver crawls down Luke’s spine—and a rec room. There’s a communal refresher, which he takes advantage of, and which still draws water from somewhere. Back through the mess, there’s a hall of offices, and then an empty, echoing chamber that Luke immediately knows was for meditation. The floor is a mosaic he doesn’t have enough light to make out, two piles of abandoned robes on the floor and the muted skylight falls onto a pedestal with a white cube. 

His first thought is that it’s desperately lonely. The second is that it has a Force knot of its own, which means something is locked inside. Luke wants to know what it is almost as much as he doesn’t. He’s waited for so long for the wisdom of the Jedi, that he’s almost afraid of what they have to offer him. 

He doesn’t like this planet, and he really hates this school, with its unmade beds and the abandoned robes and the fact nothing lives here. The cold is sinking into his bones the longer he’s here and it’s more than the lack of light. A closer look shows the mechanics within the cube. It has silver detailing around the edges, but through the crystal Luke can see chips and wires.

Luke settles in to meditate on the cold stone, so much nicer than the odd, numbing ash outside. This Force lock only takes him a moment, though it requires a finer hand. The cube’s presence in the Force expands, almost like a ghost, and when Luke opens his eyes it’s to see a hologram sitting before him, of a Wookiee in Jedi robes. 

“I am Cashwrr, young Jedi. We have not met before.” His voice is two-toned, low and melodious words paired with an even deeper, rumbling growl.

He can feel the Wookiee—the hologram—taking the measure of him, like he were here in the room. “I am Luke Skywalker.” 

The Wookiee’s head tips in a nod. “And you wish to expand your planar existence beyond the Living Force.”

“I…hope to learn many things from you, Master Cashwrr,” Luke says. His voice feels loud and reedy in the empty expanse of the room. “But I am afraid to start by saying I do not know what you mean.” 

“Why open my holocron if you are not ready to learn?” 

“I admit I did not know what it was.” A holocron, with a responsive hologram. It’s—almost too impossible to believe, except that there is a Wookiee Jedi sitting before him, made of the flickering light of a holo projector. 

“If your masters have not seen fit to teach you of holocrons you should hardly be using one.” 

Luke swallows. He doesn’t understand how this thing works, how it can feel so alive and responsive before him. “There are no Jedi masters, anymore. None besides me, I mean.” He hardly feels like a master, sometimes. Cashwrr’s chest expands, as if on a breath, but he doesn’t say anything. “I am trying to begin again—my master, his name was Obi-Wan Kenobi?”

Cashwrr shakes his head. “The name is not in my databanks.”

“He said that there were resources here that could help. His ghost, I mean.”

“Masposhani has long been a refuge for Jedi who wish to commune themselves with the cosmic Force without the distraction of the living. And,” he adds, “for padawans whose masters felt they would benefit from a more…stoic atmosphere.”

“And you taught them.” Luke feels the first flickers of excitement since the door into the caves opened. 

“My knowledge is not for padawans,” Cashwrr says. “I teach Jedi how to extend themselves into the Force eternal.” Something on Luke’s face makes it clear he doesn’t understand. “I teach them how to die,” he says slower, “and live forever in the Force.” 

Luke realizes exactly what the two empty robes mean. 

\------ 

Din and Grogu set off on a speeder for the temple after Grogu finishes his lunch. Luke had said he was free to take anything he wanted for the covert—of course he had—and Din has run out of things to do now but haul it back to the school. Luke’d thought he’d only be gone a day, maybe two, and now on the morning of day four Din is trying not to let anxiety grab hold. 

Luke is a capable fighter—his run-in with Peli was an aberration, he’s proven himself more than capable of taking Din on, and so Din has no excuse to worry for him. He’s gone to an abandoned school to pick up some data cards, or something. It isn’t dangerous. 

They’re just over the top of the hill at the back of the valley when Din sees the heat signature. He cuts the engine, and eases them into the foliage. There’s a ship. An Imperial Lambda-Class, heat signatures warm enough to make out its shape, but it’s been on the pad long enough to cool. Din doesn’t see any people with it. He looks down at the kid, who’s already staring up at him with a _shall we?_ look on his face. 

“No,” he tells him for good measure. They are not exposing Luke’s school—not without a very, very good reason. He does take them closer on foot, though, after he circles the temple and finds no heat signatures beyond in the jungle beyond wildlife. He lets Grogu trip over roots chasing bugs in the underbrush. After two hours a stormtrooper detail comes out of the temple with two droids and a repulsorlift, which they bring directly on board. Two of the stormtroopers detach a fuel truck and the ship prepares for liftoff. 

When they disappear over the trees, Din steps into the clearing and looks up, but there are too many clouds to see if a star destroyer is in orbit, if it’s even anchored in orbit over this moon, and not somewhere further off.

“Hm.” That is not good. 

“Ohh?” Grogu’s at his ankle, a tiny hand balancing him on Din’s greaves as he looks up too. 

They didn’t fly in the direction of the school, but Din doesn’t like it. “What do you think?” 

Grogu waddles toward the temple, making his little noises, and Din sighs and scoops him. “Yeah, no, we’re getting the speeder for this.” If someone is still inside, Din wants the option of a fast getaway.

Nothing is out of place inside the temple hangar, except the fuel truck, which Din is leaving where the Imps parked it, and the open blast doors. It doesn’t help the hair-raising on the back of his neck as he steps into the elevator and over the power cords in the hall. He clears the floor before getting to work, going room by room, and under the decay of time it is tragically clear that people lived here, and left fast. 

There’s no one here, though the dust in the communications hub is disturbed—Din didn’t follow Luke through here last time, he’s not sure if it’s been this way or if they were working on something, there are no heat impressions left to read. 

He fills the two canvas bags he’d packed and still has tools on the floor, but the more he picks up, the faster he feels he needs to leave. Even Grogu picks up on his sense of urgency, picking up drivers and spanners and dropping them more or less in the sacks.

“Alright, that’s enough, come on.” He hauls the bags over his shoulder and snags the kid against his chest. 

In the elevator, Din is about to push for the hangar floor, when he sees the button a flight lower marred clean from a fingerprint—the last level in the temple. He hesitates for only a moment before he pushes it, setting the bags on the floor and pulling out his blaster. Luke will want to know what they were doing here, and Din’s not willing to leave an enemy so close and unaccounted for.

It’s a lower hangar, clearly punched deeper than the original structure. There’s the undercarriage of a starship lift filling the center of the room, more discarded TIEs, but along the east wall, in what would’ve been bays for fighter ships, is the ominous blue glow of medical tanks. 

\------ 

“Ben?” Luke asks. “Can I take it?” He was not born yesterday. You do not take the solitary item on a pedestal.

 _Jedi holocron_ , Ben sounds far away, unanchored to a Force ghost, _contain the most closely guarded secrets of the Jedi. If you will not protect it, who will?_

Luke picks it up, and it’s heavier than he expects. He puts it in the bag he brought and considers at the robes on the floor. It feels as wrong to move them as it does to leave them. He can burn them, but it feels performative to hold a mourning ritual for robes that belong to Jedi he didn’t know—doesn’t even have names for, in fact.

In the end, it feels better to leave them where they found the Force, and he moves through an open door into what can only be a training hall. It has more light than any room Luke’s stepped through so far, though how much of that can be attributed to Artoo and his flashlight rolling haphazardly around is hard to say. 

[Your school doesn’t have anything like this.] Artoo bumps into a rack of training batons, and they clatter loudly before first one, then two, then a dozen tumble from the rack in a rolling clatter across the stone floor.

“Artoo,” Luke sighs, pinching the headache blooming behind his eyes. 

[You should take them.]

Luke does not want dead people’s training batons, and besides, “They won’t fit in the X-wing. We can get our own. Put them back.” 

[I can't.] Artoo rolls toward the door leading back into the mess. 

“Why not?"

[I don't want to,] he calls, disappearing.

“Great. So helpful.”

It only takes a moment to tip them into place, each cold and heavy in his hand. He is exhausted and hungry and irritable, trapped with his own company for days wouldn’t have put him in a good mood under the best of circumstances, and these are not those.

There are seven holocrons on a long table at the end of the training hall, on a large square platform that Luke assumes was for demonstrations—that’s what he’d use it for, anyway. It has a thick layer of padding that gives away its age when Luke walks across it to the holocrons.

He doesn’t bother to speak to the masters inside of them. If they were in the training hall, they’re probably useful and like Ben said—who will protect them if not him? He already feels drained in a way he’s never had to deal with before, without the Force whirling around living things to bolster his awareness.

Now that he has a better idea of what he’s looking for, he walks back to the hallway with the offices. The school is small—claustrophobic, almost—but Luke supposes if the point of the place was some sort of meditative monastery then its not going to be a sprawling complex like Coruscant. It’s bigger than his school in every way, and yet—Luke feels like staying here would drive him out of his mind in short order. 

He only finds one holocron in the offices, but he does find a couple dozen datacards and sweep those into his bag as well. He doesn’t have anything to read a datacard besides Artoo, whose cooperation might require negotiation, but the temple has terminals that’ll work.

Finished sweeping the offices, he goes looking for Artoo, who doesn’t answer when he yells. Luke realizes why as soon as he spots his chrome head in the storeroom beyond the mess.

Artoo is out of batteries. 

Luke’s reaction is—not befitting of a Jedi, but no one is here to hear him, not even Artoo anymore, and he wants to get off this fragging planet.

So, alright. He could fly back to Yavin 4 without Artoo on a full night’s sleep or without sleep and with Artoo holding course, but neither of those options is available to him here.

He drags Artoo to the hangar, where he’s sure they have recharge couplings for astromechs and plugs him in. He doesn’t need to charge all the way, a few hours will give him enough life to get them back to Yavin and he can finish charging there.

Luke slides down the wall next to the charging port. He’s not going to sleep in one of the dorm beds, can’t bring himself to consider it for more than a moment. He leans his head against the wall and sighs. It’ll just be a couple of hours, and Artoo will be good to go.

\------ 

Grogu shrinks against his chest as Din walks down the line. These are not like the tanks he’d seen before, and it takes a long minute to put his finger on it. 

They’re kids. 

Not young kids—probably older than most of the foundlings he recovered on Belsavis, he doesn’t have any grasp of age, really, but they certainly aren’t adults. He finds what looks like a control module, but he doesn’t understand anything on it. He doesn’t want to just—pull them out—he remembers Pershing’s recording, none of the Nevarro experiments he’d been working on survived.

It doesn’t make sense for them to be here, especially without a guard— 

—Unless they’re coming back. 

Din races to the lift so fast Grogu lets out an “ _Oop!_ ” and Din snags the door just as its called back to the main level. With a foot keeping it open, her grabs the duffle straps in one hand and hauls them out of the elevator with one hand.

They’re hideously loud as he drags them away from the lift, and he doesn’t have anywhere to hide them. The lower hangar is a warehouse—except he’s been in warehouses with more walls. He throws them in the pit where the starship lift comes down and hopes they aren’t lost forever when they land with a clang. Something is being unloaded above, which might hide the noise but doesn’t help the fact someone called the turbolift. 

He crams himself between the tank and the wall, a young girl suspended in there, his beskar scraping the plexi, holding Grogu to his side until they’re through. In the warbling blue light of the tank, the starfighter bay is brighter than he’d like, but he lays down on the ground and puts a finger over Grogu’s mouth.

Grogu knows how to hide. He nestles deeper into his robe and tucks his ears down. Din can hear footsteps, uniform stride, probably a trooper, and the crackle of an indistinct com transmission before the starfighter lift cranks to life and whines through the whole bay as it descends. He takes the cover of noise to shift, so he can peak out at the hangar between the tank and the bay wall. Grogu shuffles to his side again, tiny hands on his elbow.

“…a week from Arkanis.”

“They say how many?”

“Of course not.”

The other voice scoffs. Din watches two labor droids maneuver a tank onto a low repulsorlift while some stormtroopers watch. They’ve brought three, which brings the total up to seven. Seven kids.

“They say when—“ 

“How are you still alive when you ask this many questions?” 

“I don’t—“ 

“Look, obviously Ison thinks with Gideon compromised the project needs to be relocated, losing Pershing means they’re consolidating the experiment. We were told to bring them here, so were the other sites. I’m not gonna stick my neck out asking anything else.” 

__“Alright, fine, alright.” There’s a pause as they watch the droids load up the last tank. “You think we’re gonna stay here, though?”_ _

“ _Seriously_.” 

“I’m just asking!” 

The other stormtrooper starts walking back to the lift. 

“Are you sure we don’t—do anything to them?” 

“ _Don’t touch them._ You really are going to get yourself killed. They’re fine, they’re in—stasis, or something. The tanks regulate them. Don’t touch them.”

“I’m not touching anything!” The second voice finally follows him into the lift. 

Finally, the droids are done with the tanks and are heading back up on the starship lift. Din looks at Grogu, whose wide eyes are fixed on the girl in the tank. 

He can’t leave them. He can’t. It’s against the creed, for one thing, and for another: they’re children. They’re being used as some kind of experiment, and if it involved that bastard Pershing it can’t be good, because he’d heard Pershing’s recording: none of the ones on Nevarro had survived. 

He can’t break seven kids out of a military base he barely knows by himself—himself and Grogu, who admittedly he pulls more than his weight—especially since he doesn’t know what condition the kids are in. Will they wake up if he takes them out of the tank? Or will he be stuck with seven unconscious kids piled on a hoversled while he runs through the jungle. 

He needs a plan. 

He has never been particularly good at plans. He’s adaptable, a good soldier, he can work in the moment—the planning ahead part is where he usually guesses wrong, underestimates his opponents—or allies. Exhibit one: Mayfield in the prison job. Exhibit two: also Mayfield, on Morak. 

If he takes these kids now, he burns Luke’s school, there’s nowhere on the moon they can hide. He’ll have to take the _Patience_ and run to Dravian and hope the Imps doesn’t follow him there. The starport is a fucking mess—it’s even odds he loses them—but it’s just as likely he blows another covert. 

Not to mention, they’re consolidating, which means more tanks, probably more kids. If he blows through here, they won’t bring them to the temple, they’ll relocate them—somewhere. He’ll lose them and they’ll—die, probably. 

He lets the crown of his helmet hit the durracrete. He has to leave the kids. It’s bitter, and he can barely swallow it, but it’s the only option that makes sense. 

He scrapes his way back between the tank and wall, and checks over each one of the tank’s settings before he can bring himself to sneak his way out of the temple. He and Grogu take the lift on the farthest side of the hangar, just in case. There are a couple of labor droids working on the main level, but between the abandoned TIE and other miscellany they’re not difficult to avoid. The blast doors are open and unguarded, but there’s a patrol pacing the landing pad, so they wait quietly for their moment before he breaks for the jungle. 

They’re halfway up the divide when Din feels like he can safely say, “You were right. Should’ve left the speeder in the trees.” That makes the little guy laugh, which helps Din breathe just a little easier. He’s not leaving the kids forever. Just, for now. 

The walk back to the school feels twice as long as when they made it with Luke, but that’s probably just the tension of listening for the sound of speeders and stormtroopers. 

The sun is going down by the time he gets back to the school, there is a ship waiting—but it’s not Luke’s. 

\------ 

He recognizes the _Millennium Falcon_ —he’s a bounty hunter, even if he’d never picked up one of the fifty pucks with Han Solo’s face on it—but he’s still wary, seeing a man circle the _Patience_. 

He waits silently until Solo comes around again, and Din has the satisfaction of sending him staggering back in surprise. 

“Who are you?” Solo snaps, his blaster out of its holster but thankfully not pointed at him. Din’s temper is already on a short leash with those kids haunting him; if Solo puts his blaster on Grogu Din will definitely punch him. 

“You must be Luke’s student’s fath—oh, he is a baby," says the woman coming down the boarding ramp.

“Din Djarin,” he says, feeling immediately exposed by the admission, but he can’t not tell her his name. She reaches out and they clasp forearms, like soldiers, and he can tell she’s a formidable politician already. “This is Grogu.”

“Leia Organa.” 

“Yes, I recognize you.” 

“Wouldn’t think you’d watch HoloNet News all the way out here,” Han says, a plastic smile on his face, coming around to wrap an arm around Leia’s waist. 

“Her bounty made the rounds though. Ten million credits and a pretty face. Most wanted posters, their pictures aren’t that nice.”

“Hey, watch it, fella.”

The smile pinching the edges of Leia’s makes it clear she knows exactly what Din’s doing. “You’re a bounty hunter?”

He nods, and Han’s “Wait, what?” is very satisfying. 

“You don’t have to worry,” Din assures him. “I don’t take on two-bit smuggler pucks.” Well, not now that he has the Gideon bounty still burning a hole in his pocket. 

Han’s finger points at his face. “I have some perfectly respectable bounties—“

“Luke isn’t here?” Leia interrupts with a half nod to the spot the X-wing usually sits. 

“No,” Din says after a moment. “Sorry, did he—know you were coming?” As he asks he realizes the question is stupid. Leia Organa was a Senator, she probably had a million demands on her time, she couldn’t just pop by. 

“He did,” she confirms, bringing a hand up to her hip. “He didn’t mention it?”

Din hums the negative and looks at Grogu to break her stare. He knows she can’t see his eyes, but her gaze is so direct it’s off putting. Most people just stare at the helmet, at the eyeline, but she looks as if she knows exactly where his eyes are. It’s piercing. 

If Luke knew they were coming, then his being late is—more concerning, than Din was allowing himself to think before. “He should’ve been back by now.”

“How late is he?” Han asks, the cocky posture falling away to hard business. 

“Two days? Two and a half, maybe.” 

“Where was he going?”

“Masposhani. There’s a Jedi training center there. Should we be worried? ”

Leia looks into the middle distance for a moment, then shakes her head. “No, he would call if he needed us.”

“His connection was spotty when he checked in—“

“Called in the Force, I meant,” Leia says with a smile. 

Din is very grateful to his helmet, it hides the surprise and—he knew getting married didn’t suddenly change—Luke isn’t going to trust him with every single—of course he’d call his sister and Solo, all those stories made it clear they were the best of friends. He and Luke are just—just husbands which is—

He abandons the train of thought quickly, but of course the only other available track is the kids. There’s a Senator right here, he tells her there are Imperials in the sector—actually, they should probably hide the Falcon—she’ll get the Republic military or marshals or whatever they’re calling them to the temple to handle it. 

And then—

He can’t figure out where it goes next, because they rescue the kids and? Leia's Luke's sister, which is something, but the New Republic isn’t going to care about those kids as much as it will wiping up the Imperial Remnant. The New Republic barely even cares about the Remnant out here unless someone can point them in precisely the right direction. They’ll drop the kids in a war orphanages, the ones they find, if they can even manage to hold an operation that liberates both batches of tanks. 

“Din? I’m sure he’s fine.” Leia says kindly. 

He takes a deep breath and nods. Luke and his friends pulled off a lot of impossible missions during the war, but Luke isn’t here, and Din doesn’t know his friends. He’ll—wait for Luke. “Did you want to come inside?”

“That’s alright. We have friends here, actually,” Leia says, looking at Han, “we can drop on them for dinner.”

“I’ll, uh, make up a room—“ You do that for guests, right? Luke did that when he arrived. He’ll have to wear his helmet inside again, and it’s fine, it really is, but he didn’t realize how much he likes having somewhere he can take it off.

“Oh, that’s alright,” Leia says, like she knows exactly what he’s thinking. “We’ll come over for breakfast though, and if Luke’s not home—well. We’ll decide what to do.” 

\------ 

Luke lands late under light of Yavin Prime’s other moons, two of which are full, which means he gets the glaring sight of the _Millennium Falcon_ parked in the grass where he usually plants his X-wing. The moons set a blue cast upon the night, and even though his dash says it’s close to three in the morning, he can’t help but be disappointed that there is no one to greet him as he makes the long walk through the grass to the school. He’s drained, tired in a bone-deep and aching way. The animals are loud out of the forest tonight—the long croak of some kind of frog, maybe—and the chorus follows him all the way to the house.

Luke gives Artoo a pat on the head and sends him to his charging station. Fighting with the part of himself that wants to see people, he sets his bag of holocrons down on the table gently so they didn’t clang together. There is just enough light through the wide kitchen window to see the starblossoms still sitting on the table, and he presses a finger to the dirt—but they’ve been watered, and he lets himself smile. 

Part of him wants to grab something from the kitchen, because his stomach is protesting, while the rest of him knows if he eats, he won’t go to sleep, and he really wants to sleep. He rubs some of the crust from the corners of his eyes and decides on bed when he hears the slide of a door. 

An unfamiliar silhouette steps out from the hall, but Luke knows his Force signature, and it’s only a moment to realize—Din isn’t wearing his armor. 

“It’s only me,” Luke whispers, suddenly desperate not to wake anyone lest Din disappear back into his room, but he’s already stepping into the common area on bare feet. 

“You’re alright?” His voice is rough, his hair is wild with sleep, and Luke feels all his disappointment dissolve in the pool of warmth welling up to take its place. “You didn’t call.”

“I’m fine,” Luke assures him, but Din is already close, a hand coming up to his shoulder, as if to assure himself it’s true. “The sun had a—flares, or something—Artoo couldn’t get through.” 

“You sound tired.” The hand on his shoulder is warm, grounding. He hadn’t realized how shaky he’d felt. 

Luke shakes his head, even though it’s true. “I just didn’t sleep well.” He pushes up a smile, rubbing at the sudden chill in his arms. “I didn’t like it there. It felt—“ Isolated. Discordant. Dead. “—lonely.” He ducks his head and rubs at the back of his neck, trying to chase the goosebumps away. Din’s bare feet are so close to his boots on the stone floor and Luke feels gooseflesh run down his arms for a different reason. He’s never seen Din’s feet before. In the dark, in the quiet, it feels as intimate as anything. 

Din’s toes step closer and Luke doesn’t realize what’s happening before Din’s arms wrap around him, pulling him in, burying his head at his collarbones, his neck naked in his sleep shirt. Luke takes a deep breath, and Din smells like the soap Luke uses—of course he does, it’s what Luke has in the closet, but he smells like Luke, and Luke can’t help the way his hands come up and fist the back of Din’s shirt, holding him close. 

“You’re freezing.”

Luke feels warmer than he has in days. He just nods into Din’s neck.

“We were worried about you.”

“Grogu’s alright?” His lips brush against the skin of Din’s neck with the words, and a flush roars up his face like wildfire, but he doesn’t move. 

“He’s fine.” 

“I saw the Falcon.” 

Din pulls away, his hands moving across Luke’s shoulders to push him down the hall. “Yeah, your sister and her family are here. They decided to stay on the ship until you got back—I offered them a room,” Din adds quickly, “but your sister insisted.” 

There are too many directions to read into that, and Luke doesn’t want to. Din guides him to his room, the door sweeping open to a haphazardly made bed that Luke doesn’t really want to crawl into smelling of the caves. 

He shouldn’t be complaining—nothing about the trip went wrong, there is nothing to complain about, except that Luke had left feeling like he’s made the wrong choice, somewhere along the way. He can’t articulate any of it, he wishes Din would say something and pull him out of his head. Leia would hit him upside for whining, but Din just leans into the refresher and turns on the water without even asking, keeping his hand in to test the temperature. 

He’s so broad, even without his armor. Luke half sits on the foot of his bed; waiting for Din to finish so he can step in. There isn’t enough light to see anything about his form through his shirt, but Luke felt his muscles when he’d wrapped his arms around him. He was built. Not in the chiseled and suffering muscles way some pilots had starved for during the war, but the kind that are crafted to purpose, a purpose that has turned to protection, and Luke finds it so—

“Luke?” The tone makes him realize Din’s said his name more than once. 

“Sorry,” he scrubs at his face. 

“You gonna be okay?” Din moves out of the refresher, but he’s still hovering. 

“Yeah, yeah—I really am fine. I’ll just—” he steps toward the refresher, wishing he could find a way to ask Din to just—wait. To not leave him alone. He can call Leia. He hadn’t felt her when he landed—he isn’t sure if that’s because he hadn’t thought to reach for her or—

“Alright,” Din steps into the doorway. “See you at breakfast?”

Luke pulls his shirt over his head and drops it on the ground. “Okay—“

“Goodnight.” Din’s already walking back down the hall to his own room. 

He shudders a deep breath and steps into the refresher. The water is hot, it’s already fogged the room, and it does make him feel better, even if the warmth doesn’t reach quite deep enough. He steps back into his room, clean of the silt and sweat of the trip if nothing else, to see an extra blanket set precisely at the end of his bed. 

Luke wakes to a prodding in the Force and the points of two green ears poking over the edge of the bed. Luke rolls onto his elbow and looks down to see two very big, very happy eyes. His laugh is rough. “Good morning.”

Grogu squeaks and reaches up. 

“Sorry,” Din’s voice comes through the doorway just before he does, armor on, helmet off, a shadow moving through the lightening room. “He was supposed to let you sleep.”

Luke smiles. If Luke has to guess from what he can see out the window, the sun has barely cracked dawn. He should be exhausted—and he is, maybe, but he doesn’t feel it. “No, it’s good.” He pats the bed, and Din sets Grogu down on kicking feet. “Were you good while I was gone?”

Grogu makes his yes noises and Din says, “He meditated every day.”

“He did?” Luke pulls himself to sitting, running a hand through his hair for some semblance of order. 

Din looks at the top of Grogu’s head. “Well, we sat in the garden every day.”

Luke laughs again. He takes a deep breath, what feels like his first deep breath in days. “Breakfast?” he climbs out of bed and picks up the toddler. “I’m starving.”

The kitchen, however, is bare of food. There’s a package of slightly broken noodles and some rations. Luke pulls out all of it. “You didn’t go shopping?”

“We didn’t know when you’d be back,” Din says. “I didn’t want to miss you.”

That sets something hot flushing over his cheeks as he waters the rations turns on the skillet. “Next time, feed yourself.”

“Alright.” It’s quiet for a moment as the oil gets hot in the pan. “Do you want me to go get your sister?”

Luke looks over at him. “No, I’d rather eat with you. Besides,” he chuckles, trying not to think about what Din and Leia might have gotten into when he wasn’t here, “she’s on vacation, if I tried to wake her up this early I could lose my other hand.”

Din smiles at the terrible joke. 

Luke fries the noodles and the cubes of meat, adding some of the spices in jars on the window sill until they have something edible, if not nutritious. 

“What are these, then?” Din asks, carrying the plates and leaving Luke to get Grogu. The bag had fallen sideways on the table, its cubic bounty attempting an escape. 

“Holocrons from the old Jedi Order. They’re incredibly rare, apparently—all of the ones the Jedi had were in the Archives when the Emperor ordered them destroyed. Almost all, I guess.” Luke pulls out a pale blue one with dark gold metalwork. “I didn’t check them all once I knew what they were—they were in a training room, so, I think they’ll help—but I just—I wanted to get out of there.” He can’t say he feels back to normal, because he hadn’t realized he felt so incredibly bad until Din hugged him last night—he’d just thought he was tired from the nightmares. 

Now he isn’t so sure. 

Luke sets all the holocrons out on the table. With actual sunlight, he can appreciate the gradient shades of blue and green and purple. It is, he knows, a windfall, but somehow the feeling of victory escapes him. There had been a holocron on the black market just after the end of the war, going for a price with more zeroes on the end of it than Luke had ever seen. That holocron had disappeared, its trail vanishing into the Core worlds. 

Now he has nine. 

“You can only open them with the Force, but then it’s just a hologram,” he says. Cashwrr had felt like more than a hologram.

In the Force the holocrons felt—closed. The Force flowed in and threw everything, except these boxes, where it went over and around. He wishes he’d kept them in anything resembling order, because he wasn’t sure which came from the training rooms and which had not, beyond the white one. Grogu’s trying to mimic him in the Force, little tendrils poking at the cubes, and Luke pulls him along for his next attempt. 

Everything he’d read about holocrons on the way home—and he found more about Sith than Jedi in this—was that you asked and they answered, like a fragment of a person, recorded and preserved for all time. They are difficult to make, because the creator has to approach the lesson from all sides—anticipate every avenue of question or conundrum. It takes hundreds if not thousands of hours to make one lesson, and many holocrons contain an entire skill. 

He has a pale purple one in his hand, and asks, _Do you teach Ataru?_ and there is no other words to describe the way it feels in his hand except to say a cold shoulder. 

He sends out the question more generally, and picks up a green one with silver fittings, the only one that feels like a prickling of interest, like the pins and needles of a limb waking up. 

Din eats his food in silence as Luke and Grogu poke and thread their way through the Force lock until, with an almost silent hum, a hologram sprang to life above it, sitting cross-legged with his cane flat over his thighs. 

Master Yoda.

The name escapes Luke in a whisper and holocron turns its wrinkled eyes on Luke. He’s holding the Force lock alone, Grogu’s attention evaporating with the sight of the old Master—or, not old, not as Luke knew him. Still wrinkled, still small, but less worn around the eyes and mouth. Less curled under the weight of time. 

“A long time since I was called upon to teach it has been. A padawan you are not.”

“No, Master. We look to learn Ataru.”

“To learn from a holocron and not myself you seek. Died I have, then. Yes, hrrrm. Inconvenient for you.” 

Luke stutters over his words—an experience vividly familiar to Dagobah—and Grogu toddles into the projection, distorting Yoda’s features even as he turns to see.

“Ah. Too small to train in Ataru this padawan is.” A curled, flickering hand passes over Grogu’s head. “Many years you must wait, little one.” 

The look he fixes Luke with sets a bitter well pooling over in his heart. It reminds him of how he failed Yoda, leaving his training, returning almost too late to say goodbye. 

“Grogu recognizes you, from his time in the crèche on Coruscant,” Luke says. 

“Hm. After my time, yes. Seek me out in the Force, you must. Hmm.” His eyes narrow. “Myself in the Force, I am, but this holocron’s knowledge instead you seek, hm?” 

Luke wets his lips. “This is Din Djarin.” 

“A Mandalorian-Jedi,” Yoda’s voice pitches in what could almost be excitement, “A long time without one, there has been. No,” Yoda’s dark eyes flick over Din, “not a Jedi.” 

Din looks briefly at Luke before he answers. “No, sir.”

“Sir,” Yoda laughs a familiar cackle, “ _sir_ , he says. Such manners he has, but no. Reserved for Jedi the teachings of the Jedi are; have them you cannot. Share them I _will not_.”

“Master Yoda—“

“This holocron in the Archives, it should be. Why do you have it when it is not yours.”

“There are no Archives, Master Yoda. There are no Jedi—not besides me.” He doesn’t know why he’s arguing with a cube—it hadn’t occurred to him he might have to—it feels so real. “My Master Obi-Wan sent me to the caves of Masposhani, where I found you,” he takes a breath, trying to line up his arguments. Yoda had been stubborn on Dagobah, and demanding, but he had been right, too. Luke didn’t regret—will never regret going after Han and Leia and Chewie, but he hadn’t been ready for Darth Vader. It had cost him his hand. “Din Djarin is my ally,” he says, because he’s quite sure the word husband isn’t going to get him what he wants. “He has the darksaber and requires instruction to wield it to his full potential—instruction I am unable to provide.”

Yoda’s chin tips up. “You think the Force leads away from the Jedi.”

The thought hadn’t even occurred to him—that the Force could ever choose such a thing. “I do not know, Master. But this is the way it is leading me now.” He catches Din’s eye, his face steady and impassive and Luke feels a welling of trust even before Din’s leg leans against his under the table.

Yoda’s eyes close for a long moment before he breathes audibly. “Trust in the Force, we must.”

Luke and Grogu hold the Force lock open, while Din and Luke circle each other in the common room. He should suggest they go outside, he knows he should, but Din would have to put on his helmet—Leia and Han and Ben are here, he can feel them sleeping on the periphery now—and Luke doesn’t want to lose the last minutes he has with Din’s face until they leave.

Yoda’s exercise in forms are for higher elbows, faster thrusts, more turn and dives than Luke would ever feel comfortable with, and Din does them—he never needs to be told an instruction twice. His usual throw-everything-at-the-enemy style is well suited to Ataru. He doesn’t have the Force to do the flips and leaps holocon-Yoda demonstrates, but his jetpack will offer him a similar maneuverability. 

Luke feels the moment Din’s focus slips. It’s the axis of engagement, the moment when he has to choose between offense and defense where he spins without traction—Din’s instinct is still to shoot and not swing—but when he makes his move Din hooks him at the elbow and sends him tumbling, catching him at the last moment so he doesn’t land face first on the ground. Pulling him back to standing, retracting their sabers, they’re both close and panting. Luke can see the beginnings of sweat at Din’s hairline, the edge of a smug smile.

He glances at the table, and realizes the holocron’s off, Grogu’s grip on the Force lock gone, the toddler tipped sideways on the table with a big ear folded under his cheek. Luke lets go of Din and picks Grogu up; he’s completely out, not even a tremor of awareness in the Force, and heads to put him in his little bed. His head is moving a mile a minute, the way Din weaved and knit himself through Luke’s strikes and parries—and that was with only a few pointers on the form, that wasn’t even a full lesson, once he’s mastered the form—Luke can feel his heartbeat in his fingertips, pounding with excitement. 

Grogu makes the tiniest snores as Luke sets him in the crib. Din stands in the doorway when he turns back around, and moves back to let Luke by, but Luke doesn’t want to pass. He plants his hand on Din’s beskar and pushes him into the wall opposite and kisses him.

Din’s reaction is immediate—a bloom of arousal in the Force, a gloved hand combing through Luke’s hair, the way his lips push back everything Luke can give him. He threads his own hand—his flesh hand—into Din’s hair, and gets a small, choked off moan when he pulls. 

“Can we—do you want to—“ Luke whispers, and he hasn’t even finished the question before Din is whispering “ _Yes_ ,” against his mouth and walking him backwards down the hall.

By the time they cross the threshold to Luke’s room, Din has the ties of Luke’s shirt undone and has dropped his own gloves on the floor. It’s so smoothly done, Luke feels a tickling of nerves. He’s done this before, he’s never had complaints, but no one would ever accuse him of being suave.

This first tentative brush of fingerprints against Luke’s stomach traps a gasp inside his mouth, and Din takes the opportunity to steal inside. Luke gets the chest plate magnets unclasped, and forces himself to lean back to help Din pull it over his head, taking the cloak with it. He sets to work on the jumpsuit of his underarmor and with half a mind, he closes the door with the Force and activates the lock. 

Din glances over at the sound, and Luke takes the chance to lay a kiss on his jaw, under his ear, to shrug out of his tunic and slide his hands against the bared skin of Din’s chest. He shudders in that way Luke is beginning to crave. 

“It’s been—“ Din sucks in a breath and lets it out just as fast. “—a while.” 

“For me, too.” Luke hasn’t had anyone in—years. Since the Rebellion, that precipitous turn from being Luke to being Luke Skywalker, and everyone had known about him and never wanted to know him—he had enjoyed the attention until he had noticed the difference. It didn’t have this: the vibrant heat in the Force, the waves of arousal that swirl around them, Din’s consuming attention. “We can go slow.”

Din pulls off the vambraces and shrugs out of the top of his suit, the pauldrons hitting his thighs, the suit hanging on his belt. “I don’t need to go slow. I just need to know what you need.” 

He pulls Din back down for a soft kiss, and another, and, “I’m doing just fine.” 

Din’s hands coast up his back, warm and calloused and pulling the breath out of his lungs. Luke was hard before they’d finished stumbling into the room, but he’s aching in his sleep pants now, arching under Din’s hands. 

They’re not kissing anymore, really, they’re—running hands, trailing lips, breathing in tandem. Luke basks in the feeling of Din’s entire focus, his Force signature underpinned with arousal and trepidation and urgency but all of it— _all of it_ on Luke. It makes him shudder as Din’s hands run down his back, wide enough to cover the expanse of it, his fingers sliding under his sleep pants until the fabric loses their grip on his waist and rushes to the floor. Then it’s the bare skin of his thighs against Din’s beskar, the rough texture of his suit pressing much needed friction against his cock, but the wrong kind of friction, and he can’t help the whine in his throat.

Din kisses him again, those soft lips starting gentle and demanding more as he tips Luke inexorably backwards onto the bed, into the mess of blankets he’d left barely more than an hour ago. When Din moves to follow him Luke laughs, he can’t help it, and tries to sit up and grab at Din’s belt at the same time.

“Get this off,” he says, grinning. He watches a flush spread from Din’s neck up to his ears and down across his chest, and Din looks suddenly bashful as he works at his belt. Luke pushes himself up the bed, fighting the urge to close up as Din’s eyes rove over him. He’s not ashamed of his body, exactly, but he’s never displayed it, he doesn’t have the sort of physique that moves anyone—not the way Din does. 

Finally free of his belt, Din curses as his jumpsuit tangles around his boots and he sits on the bed to unbuckle himself free. Luke moves to kneel behind him, wrapping around him and over him, knees digging into the mattress beside his thighs and it’s Luke trembling now, his skin alive at every point of contact. His cock presses tight against Din’s back and he pushes the urge down, doesn’t want to rush this, instead lets his thumb rub Din’s nipple to a drawn peak while he sucks a mark under his ear. Leia will see it, Han will mention it, and Luke knows the satisfaction that idea brings him isn’t exactly quintessence, is more possessive than he has a right to, marriage or not, and he doesn’t care. 

He watches Din fumble with the buckles, hooks his chin over Din’s shoulder and drags his hand from teasing Din’s nipple to running lightly over the lines of his abs, flexing with every heavy breath, to the crease at his thigh, across the skin of his inner thigh—

“ _Luke_.” 

—to his cock, which fits hot and hard in the palm of his hand. “ _Mm?_ ” he asks against his jaw, giving him a squeeze, but just, holding, just a firm grip, as Din shudders under him. Din drops the buckle. He makes half a noise, obviously trying to keep silent, and Luke wants to break that habit if he can. 

“Din?” He strokes up, running his thumb over the slit and catching the spurt of come and dragging it back down his length. Din’s fingers stretch into Luke’s hair, caging his head against Din’s shoulder, and he’s happy to rub his cheek there. “Are you going to take off your boots?”

“ _Hng_ ,” he grunts, grabbing Luke’s hand and stopping its slow momentum. “If you could stop—“

“Stop?” He let’s go, or tries too, with dins hand over his.

Din’s breathing hard. “Not—stop, just—I’ll come.”

“That is rather the point.”

“It’s too soon,” he says.

“Am I supposed to find your reactions to me unattractive?” Luke asks, trying to get a read on Din’s expression.

“I want it to be good for you,” he tells the ceiling.

Luke lets go, using his hand to turn Din’s face to look at him, red flush and all. “You are.” His eyes are impossibly dark, just the faintest line differentiating the brown from his blown pupils. Luke runs a thumb over the edge of his lip, brushing the soft hair of his mustache. “You are good for me.” 

Din turns out of Luke’s grip, and before his heart can sink more than a moment Din’s boots are off and he’s on the bed, over Luke, his weight sinking him into the mattress, pinning him there, and Luke feels himself relax even as Din’s rock forward sets his hips begging for more pressure. The noise that escapes him when Din slides a thigh between his legs is feral and then, Luke’s laughing again, he’s buzzing with it as he hitches a leg around Din’s flank and threads fingers through his hair to that delicious tremor, just breathless with elation. 

Din manages to get a hand around them both and his _callouses_ and the rhythm and his eyes—that look of puzzled wonder—and the warmth of him has Luke on the edge, tipping, even as he wants to make it last, even as he wants to go together. He can’t get the words out, just, “ _Din—_ “ and then he’s coming in hard pulses over his chest, Din still working him over. The lamp is pushed off the bedside table and the doors to his wardrobe bounce open. He looks at the wardrobe, one door slowly easing its way closed again. “That’s never happened before,” he pants, looking up at him. 

“No?” Din asks, and he squeezes their cocks together, pulling another spurt of come from Luke as his body pulses with the need to get closer and farther away at the same time. 

Luke pushes his hand away and gets his own around Din, his own slick easing the slide, and with his other hand he cups his balls, massaging them gently as Din comes down on both his elbows. “What do you need?” Luke asks. 

Din buries his head against Luke’s shoulder. “I don’t know,” he gasps. “Nothing—it’s—“

“That’s alright,” he kisses his hair, his ear, his cheek, making sure his thumb presses against his frenulum on the next pass. “I’ll take care of you.”

It’s a quiet minute broken only by the sound of slick and Din’s uneven breathing until he’s shuddering at the edge, and it just takes a light pull on Din’s balls to send him to pieces, gasping against his chest. The full weight of him, warm and naked and shivering with aftershocks, drags Luke halfway to sleep, even knowing he’ll regret waking up tacky, he can’t resist tracing his fingers up Din’s spine. Din’s gasp shoots him up and away, and Luke misses his warmth even as he can’t help a tired chuckle. “Ticklish?” 

“No,” Din says firmly, but he’s holding Luke’s wrist like he’s afraid of it. 

He pulls at the sheet until it frees itself from the mattress and he can wipe off the mess of his front. Din is—hovering, really. Perched on his elbow, on his side, and only when Luke looks at him, he lets go of his arm. Luke rolls on his side too, but he doesn’t have the energy to hover, his lips against the pillow. He looks at Din, who’s face is inscrutable, and waits him out—not something he’d have the patience for, before Din rang such a satisfying orgasm out of him.

“That was—okay?” 

Luke blinks, his smile stumbling. “Just okay?” 

“I mean, it was good.” He doesn’t sound certain. 

Luke feels his brain reluctantly shedding its afterglow. Din isn’t relaxing like someone who is satisfied. “Did you not think so?”

 _Luke?_ A wry voice says in the Force and panic ices his veins as he shoots upright. _I didn’t want to interrupt, but there’s no food in your house._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *rubs hands together* oh look, a chance to miscommunicate, my favorite. Don't worry, an Actual Conversation is coming 
> 
> Your comments last chapter made my entire life! I'll respond to them this weekend 🖤 You are so charming and funny and do wonders for my inspiration and momentum. Thank you. I hope this chapter was worth the wait!


	8. millennium falcon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Luke realizes he knows exactly how to break the tension. “You’ll never guess who I met on Tatooine.” He does not wait for them to guess. “Boba Fett.”
> 
> Han whirls on him. “What?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys ask such great questions in the comments and the answer is almost always “because I’m not that smart” 😅

“Okay, um.” Luke doesn’t think he’s ever climbed out of bed so fast in his life. His body burns hot and cold at the same time. Clothes, he needs clothes, except, no, he’s gross. He needs to shower. “Impeccable timing.”

 _I have a hungry five-year-old_ , Leia says. _I’d like to head him off before he eats Artoo._

He doesn’t have time for a shower. Luke grabs a wash cloth from the refresher and wipes himself off, catching a glance of himself and the red line of hickeys from his throat to his shoulder in the mirror. _Coming._

“Luke, wait, I’m sorry.” 

“It’s fine,” Luke says snagging his clothes off the ground. “Everything’s fine.” 

“I didn’t mean—I don’t know—“ Din’s still in bed, like he had half a thought to climb out after him and stopped himself with one leg on the floor. His color is high, and he has marks of his own under his ear, at the curve of his neck. “I meant me, was I—I told you I don’t do this.” 

Luke finishes pulling on his sleep pants. That had not been what he’d said, actually. Luke feels suddenly—tentative, or maybe it’s apprehensive. “You said it had been a while.” 

“Right, yes.” Din’s face is flushed a heavy, embarrassed red, and he talks to a point over Luke’s shoulder. 

“How long is a while?” _I don’t do this_ implies something else, that Din didn’t want to, maybe—Luke doesn’t believe for a second Din hasn’t had the opportunity, with his armor and his honor and also he’s a great dad. Din pulls his lip between his teeth, and Luke realizes, maybe that part isn’t his business. “You don’t have—

“Sixteen years—“

“ _Sixteen?_ ” _Pfassking_ hell that’s a long time.

“—but even then I didn’t do—this.”

“Sex?” Luke asks. Then it dawns on him. “You mean,” he waves a hand between them, “nudity.” That’s a thought Luke’s dick jumps on immediately, a stirring of interested pulling from the base of his spine as he takes a deep breath. The idea of Din is full armor and Luke not is—something worth dwelling on, which he absolutely cannot do with his sister waiting for him. 

“Right, so,” Din swallows. 

“Sixteen years,” Luke repeats. Forcing his brain to break free of the fantasy requires actually shaking his head. “We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”

“I wanted to.”

“Right, but, I know there are some people who don’t like sex, and that’s fine, it’s okay, I mean, if you don’t like it, you don’t have to do it for me.” Now Luke is the one who’s face is burning, but this is important. 

“I did like it.” 

“Okay,” Luke says. “I just mean—sixteen years is a long time to—“

“I didn’t feel like it,” Din says, shrugging uncomfortably, pulling the sheet over his lap. “With other people, I mean. Obviously I—“ 

Din in no armor, Din in full armor, Din jacking off by himself—Luke has the fodder for a hundred fantasies in just one conversation. 

“Look, Leia and Ben are in the kitchen, and they’re starving. There’s a homestead a few clicks away we can go and buy some food, picnic in the forest—” 

“We only have one speeder.”

Luke pulls up short. “What? What happened? Did it break?” Stars, if he left Din with a shitty speeder that stranded him in the jungle—

 _Luke!_ Leia’s push through the Force twinges a headache. 

_Just a minute!_ he snaps. 

“No, no it was fine.” Din works his jaw and adds, “But there were Imps at the temple.”

His stomach drops. “What?” He looks Din over, as if he hadn’t already done that, but there were no bruises, no marks—at least, none besides what Luke left him.

“They didn’t see me, they don’t know we’re here. But I had to leave the speeder behind.” 

_We._ Luke’s heart flutters. 

“They’re part of the same Remnant that was after Grogu. They’re relocating because of Gideon’s capture and—Luke, they have kids there.” 

“What?” 

“I think they’re part of Pershing’s experiments to make more Force-users.”

Luke all but chokes on his disbelief. “His _what?_ Why didn’t I know any of this?”

Din scrubs his hands over his face. “I didn’t think it mattered. The people we found on Nevarro—the ones Pershing was working on—none of them survived.” 

“What was he doing—do you know what he was trying to—“

Din grabs his underwear off the floor. “Something with the kid’s blood and M-counts, I don’t know.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this when I got home?” It didn’t _matter?_ If Imperials are messing around with the Force—he can’t think of anything that matters more. The idea you could create Force-sensitives at all is counter to everything he knew. 

“You were asleep on your feet.”

Luke expands the question with spread arms. “Or this morning?”

He hesitates. “With your sister and her husband here, I thought—I think we should handle this ourselves.” 

“You and I cannot take on an entire Imperial faction,” he says, suddenly exasperated. 

He’ll readily admit that he and Din are both exceptional warriors, but—well, he isn’t going to tempt fate taking on those odds when they have other choices. Spending the entire rescue with a fist around his heart, afraid Din is going to get shot in the back—why? When they can have Han and Leia, and Chewie would drop whatever job he’s on if Luke needs him. Leia can probably wrangle a division of whatever the Republic has now that isn’t a military to help them take on Imperials. 

“It’s not an entire faction. I don’t think. And I have—friends, we can ask for help.” He sounds unsure, and Luke doesn’t know if it’s the Imps or the friends he’s unsure of. 

“Han and Leia are my friends. They can help.” Din doesn’t know them. Or, maybe worse, he knows Han by reputation.

Din shakes his head. “Leia is a Senator. She can’t—fight Imps on backwater moons.” 

Leia will do what needs to be done, like she always has. Maybe she won’t pick up a lightsaber and join them in the Temple, but he’s never known someone with a better head for logistics. “Exactly, she’s a Senator. She can get the Republic to come and help.”

“I overheard the troopers talking about another load of kids coming in. I think we should wait them out.”

“All the more reason. If they’re bringing more children then I’d bet there’ll be more stormtroopers too. It’ll give the Republic time to mobilize and put a plan in place. Din, trust me, they know what they’re doing and they’ll have a hell of a lot more manpower than we can drum up.” 

Din takes a long minute to stare out the window, before quietly saying, “Alright.”

“Alright,” Luke agrees. He can feel the conflict aching in Din, and he doesn’t know if he’s supposed to soothe it or if it would be better to let Din grapple with it himself. He can’t make Din trust the Republic, and everything that comes to mind sounds patronizing, so Luke lets it go. Din’ll come around once they have the kids safe and sound. 

Luke pulls on his shirt and concentrates in the Force for a moment. Leia, Ben, and Han are all awake. Artoo’s bustling around the common area and Grogu’s clinging to sleep as hard as he can. The window in Grogu’s room is open, which keep’s Luke from disturbing him. “I need to go see everyone, figure out the food situation. You can use my shower,” he says, and turning to the window, he catches Din’s helmet when it pulls through the room. He hands it over and steals a quick kiss. “See you out there.”

\------

“You did find food,” Luke says, the sight of them sitting at the table eating rations mildly aggravating. 

“They’re form the _Falcon_ ,” Leia says. She’s sitting beside the flowerpot, petting the dark green leaves. 

“I provide for my family,” Han says, looking at Luke with a completely flat expression before he goes back to convincing Ben to put the food _in_ his mouth.

“I am not eating rations for two days. We are going shopping.” She points a fork at the flowers. “Do you know what these are?” 

“Uh,” Luke slides into a seat and tries to remember if Din told him. “I don’t think so. Din got them for me.”

“The Mandalorian got you _flowers?_ ” Han laughs, “Oh, this is too good.”

“They’re starblossoms,” Leia says. Her voice makes Luke and Han pay attention, because she’s smiling, but she sounds halfway to tears. She swallows and adds, running a finger over a stoma, “They were native to Alderaan.” 

“Where did he get them?” Han asks Luke.

“I’ll ask,” Luke assures him. “Actually, I need to talk to you about something.”

“Hm,” Leia says, tearing her gaze from the flowers and putting her chin on her fist. “Someone tall and shiny perhaps? This is what you couldn’t share over the com?” 

“What?” Oh, god, he had actually forgotten. 

“He was very polite,” Leia adds, smiling.

Han crosses his arms. “Not to me.”

“A little reserved, maybe,” Leia goes on, as if Han wasn’t there. “I assume this is more than just—a convenient warm body?”

Luke nods.

“I’m happy for you. It’s nice to know you’re not spending all your time alone.”

“He’s a Mandalorian,” Han tells Leia, “They’re not known for sticking around.” 

“Din seems very steady,” Leia’s voice has a note of warning. “He has a son to take care of.”

“I’m just saying, Luke shouldn’t expect him to be someone he’s not.” 

Luke wishes he did not understand subtext. He puts more of the sweet fruit cubes on Ben’s plate. “Right, so, I married him.”

They turn on him in unison. “ _What?_ ”

Din chooses that moment to come out of the hall with a newly awakened Grogu. Din is wearing his helmet, of course, which means no one can see the marks Luke left behind, and it bothers him, which is an unpleasant discovery. Han and Leia blink at him, and at Luke, and again at Din. 

“Why don’t Grogu and I go get supplies, and you all can talk,” Din suggests quickly.

Luke stares at him. “We could all go shopping together.” 

“We won’t fit in the speeder,” Din says, but he does step close enough to bring his forehead down to Luke’s. 

“We can fly,” he says, giving Grogu his finger to squeeze. 

Din straightens, already stepping away. “No, I think you should talk to your family.”

“You don’t know where you’re going,” Luke tries and he knows Din can read his do-not-leave expression and is _ignoring him._

“I’ve seen the farm when I fly in. I’m sure I can find it.” 

“Din—“

“Thank you, Din,” Leia calls. 

At least they wait for the door to shut before they start throwing questions at him. 

“When did you get married?”

“How long have you been together?” 

“Why weren’t we invited?” 

Luke can’t tell if they’re actually upset or mad or just putting it on to give him a hard time, but he does sense a firm thread of concern in every word. 

“You didn’t even mention him when you visited!” Leia exclaims, getting up from the table and pulling Ben out of his seat. “Yes, yes, you can go outside. Artoo can you watch him?” 

The droid rolls after its charge with an agreeable whine. He is never half as helpful when Luke asks for things.

Leia turns back to the table. “Luke, seriously.”

“I very seriously did get married,” he says. He wishes he could stand up too, he doesn’t like how she’s towering over him—she’s supposed to be the short one. 

“Damn, kid, _why?_ ” Han asks.

“How long have you been together?” Leia pushes. 

Luke wants to answer neither one of those questions, but he says, “About two weeks.” 

“What?” they yell.

“I met him when I picked up his son! You knew that.”

Leia puts a hand on her forehead and repeats Han’s question, “Why?”

“I saw his face, when I went to rescue Grogu, and I wasn’t supposed to. You can only show your face to your clan, so it was—Din couldn’t be a Mandalorian anymore, unless—“

Leia finishes for him, “Unless you got married. Oh, Luke.”

“That’s archaic,” Han says. “Din told you this?”

“He asked the head of his tribe what to do about breaking the creed, and this is what she said.” 

“You went with him, or this is what he told you?”

“Din didn’t lie to me.” He doesn’t know if it’s the whiplash he’s experienced this morning or just the way this has turned confrontational, but his annoyance sparks into actual anger. They’re protective and he appreciates it—or he knows he should appreciate it, which isn’t the same thing—and they love him, but he isn’t stupid. He’s grown up from the farm boy Han smuggled off of Tatooine. 

“Kid—“ 

“I’m not a kid. Din didn’t lie, this isn’t some elaborate con. I do know when people are lying to me.”

Leia cuts in. “What were the vows, what exactly did you promise him?”

Luke takes a deep breath, trying not to be angry. “I’m married, Leia. Could you just—“

“You didn’t invite me!” she says, poking him twice in the chest. “Tell me what you said.”

Luke lets out a sigh. He knows she’s not asking for sentimental reasons, and he resents it, but—he also does want to share it with someone. He just wishes they were happier for him. “They were the traditional Mandalorian wedding vows. _We are one when together, we are one when parted, we will share all, and together we will raise warriors._ "

Leia’s quiet a moment, a smile pulling at her face.“That’s actually very beautiful.”

“Beautiful?” Han says, “I mean, raise warriors? Kid, come on.”

“I’m a Jedi,” Luke says, gesturing at the room they’re standing in. “Building a school to teach _more Jedi_ , that part was already happening.”

“Alright, but hang on, what did he even bring into this? He doesn’t even have a ship. That transport out there has your name on it.” 

“Han,” Leia starts, putting a hand on his shoulder. 

“No, what’s mine is yours is great and all, but you can’t let yourself get jerked around by a guy you met in the two weeks you’ve been gone. I mean, we let him out of our sight and this is—” Han points at Luke, “You’re a Jedi Knight and hero of the Republic, what is he? A bounty hunter with expensive armor?” 

Luke would’ve been perfectly happy with a bounty hunter, he would’ve done the same thing for Din, but angry as he is Luke relishes this moment, crossing his arms and staring him down. “The king of Mandalore.” 

Han stops, open-mouthed, whatever he’d been about to say dying in his throat. Even Leia stares at Luke. 

“You have got to be kidding me,” Han says.

“That’s—that’s actually a problem. Luke, the Senate is trying to arrange alliances with—“

“This doesn’t have anything to do with the Republic.”

“You’re _Luke Skywalker._ It does. The balance of power—“

“Leia. It’s done. The Senate will deal with it, or not for all I care. Din doesn’t care about the balance of the New Republic. He didn’t even want to ask the Republic for help. We have a—problem.” He rubs at his forehead with his robotic hand, the mechanism pressing firm and soothing the budding headache. That’s understating it, really, but this confrontation has had enough emotional highs. 

“What do you need?” she asks immediately. 

Luke can’t help but smile. He and his sister aren’t so different after all. 

\------

Leia, of course, knows exactly who to call and in a few hours, it’s all arranged. There’s no Republic military, not since the disarmament agreement, but the Defense Force is basically the same thing, with tighter parameters justifying the use of force. Not a problem here, since they’re conducting illegal experiments on children. 

They’ll be here tomorrow to begin recon and planning. 

“You won’t stick around for it?” Luke asks when Leia reports back to them as they’re going over the Falcon. Han doesn’t need his help with any of the actual work, but the Force is useful when it comes to lifting heavy panelling into place so he tolerates Luke’s hovering. 

She smiles at him. “I’m not a soldier anymore, Luke. There’s a debate on Mid Rim aide I have to be back for and—it wouldn’t look good, with the official nonviolent stance of the Senate.”

“You were never just a soldier,” Han says, looping an arm over her shoulder. “And the guys in the Defense Force aren’t my biggest fans, so, better to lay low.”

“What did you do?”

“ _Nothing._ They just don’t play well with others.”

Luke doesn’t believe him for a second, and Leia confirms, “He sold a shipment of repeating blasters out from under them to the Guavian Death Gang.”

“I got them what they ordered!” Han says.

“Three weeks later,” Leia chides. 

“They didn’t specify a date. How is that my fault?”

“Anyway, they won’t do business with Han anymore, which is probably for the best. The number of people who call me about him, you wouldn’t believe.” 

“I really would,” Luke says. 

Han just holds up his hands. “Okay, okay.” 

Luke feels Grogu in the Force before he even hears the speeder through the trees. He’s bubbling over with excitement and happiness and Din probably shouldn’t be driving that fast.

“Luke?” Leia asks.

“They’re back,” he says, and sure enough a moment later you can hear the speeder whirring through the trees. 

Din clearly wasn’t expecting them out by the ships, and he pulls up short. Grogu’s laughing a _hehehe_ with waving hands and the _more more more_ is easy to read in his energy. 

“Should you be driving that fast?” Luke asks, and he suddenly feels like Aunt Beru with her hands on her hips standing in the doorway of their homestead. 

“He likes it,” Din says, and that’s certainly true. Din swings off the speeder and sets Grogu on the ground to toddle over to Luke, pushing memories of his adventure through their Force bond.

“I really don’t know if he should be eating so many bugs,” Luke tells Din while he grabs the supplies out of the saddlebags. 

“Yeah, he’s a menace. Where’s the little guy?” 

“Ben?” Luke asks, surprised. “Artoo has him in the garden.” 

“Hm.”

“Leia solved your Imperial problem,” Han says, and Din freezes.

“I haven’t solved anything. A squadron is heading to the base to patrol and plan.” Leia’s calm surety doesn’t siphon off any of Din’s stress.

Din nods slowly. “Good, then.”

Luke wishes he wasn’t so apprehensive about the whole thing. He doesn’t know how to make it better, but he realizes he does know exactly how to break the tension. “Hey, you’ll never guess who I met on Tatooine.” He does not wait for them to guess. “Boba Fett.”

Han whirls on him. “ _What? _”__

____

“Turns out: not dead,” Luke says, picking up Grogu when he tugs on his pants. “Don’t worry, he doesn’t hold a grudge.”

____

“ _He_ doesn’t? You _talked to him_.”

____

“We had dinner,” Luke says, which is patently untrue. Luke and Grogu had dinner, Boba Felt just laughed at him, but it turns Han’s face a satisfying shade of red. “Why don’t Din and I go get lunch ready?” 

____

____

\------

____

____

Din brought back wraps from one of the farm market stands for lunch, and Luke puts away everything while Din sets the food out and a small brown box on the table. He takes his to go eat in his room, and Luke brings Ben and his thousand questions to the table. Really, Din should be here to fend off some of them, because they’re all about him. 

____

“Why isn’t he eating with us?” “What’s a Mandalorian?” “What’s a clan?” “Am I in your clan?” “Does it have to be a mudhorn? A mudhorn’s not cool.” “Is he really Grogu’s dad?” 

____

They don’t stop.

____

Din eventually comes returns while Luke is juggling making Ben eat something for every question and getting Grogu to eat his now deconstructed wrap, its pieces piled on the table where he dumped them. Din takes the small box he’d put on the table and sets it carefully by Ben’s place. “This is for you.” 

____

Ben stares at it. “What is it?”

____

“It’s a game.” Din takes the lid off to reveal tiles with painted shapes on them. “It’s just—you have to make a row of 6 of the same color or the same shape, and you can only put the tiles next to other tiles of the same color or shape. The person who makes a row first wins.” 

____

Luke’s throat is tight. The wooden squares have circles and triangles and stars carved and painted and Din begins to lay out an example game on the table. “That sounds fun.” 

____

“You’ll play with me?” Ben says, getting on his knees on the chair. 

____

“Sure,” Din says, clearly surprised. Luke feels—everything, all at once, and he doesn’t have the space to contain it. 

____

“Are you my uncle now?” he asks.

____

Din’s head comes up, and Luke holds his breath until Din says, “If you want.” 

____

“Okay. I go first because I’m smaller,” Ben declares, and Din starts flipping over the tiles to their blank side so they can divide them up. 

____

Luke watches and feels his heart grow as Ben gets the hang of it, Din gently shaking his head when he lays a piece wrong and nodding when he makes a smart move. Ben does not want Luke’s help—he announces that loudly the first time Luke makes a suggestion—so Luke settles in to watch with Grogu, occasionally taking a proffered piece of vegetable that Grogu doesn’t want to eat, which would be all of them if Luke let him get away with it. 

____

“I was thinking,” Luke says after they finish their first game—which Ben says was just a practice round—and start shuffling the tiles again, “this afternoon, we could go to the temple. Just to check on it,” he adds, which Din turns to him sharply. “If you wanted.” 

____

The tension in Din’s signature has been ebbing and flowing all day, but never gone entirely. He doesn’t have the trust in the Republic that Luke does, or the optimism that it’ll work out, but maybe if he can see what they’re up to, take the measure of what they’ll face and start thinking of a plan, it’ll help. Maybe. It’s the only thing Luke has thought of.

____

When Din nods, Luke goes to find Han and Leia and tell them lunch is on the table. Before he gets all the way to the Falcon he senses it, and after he exacts justice, he and Leia agree to never do anything that could even tangentially be called interrupting ever again. 

____

____

\------

____

____

They bring Grogu with them, Luke only lets himself feel guilty about it for a minute, because Grogu is always happier with Din than he is anywhere else and Luke—well, Luke knows, Din won’t let himself charge headfirst into danger if he’s carrying Grogu.

____

He’d still charge in, Luke thinks, but maybe he’ll hesitate long enough for Luke to get there first. 

____

They take the speeder until they’re about ten klicks out, just before the hill that marks the edge of the valley. It’s a humid day, and Luke’s clothes start sticking to him almost immediately. 

____

“Is it safe for him to eat that?” Din asks, trying to pull a heavy green leaf out of Grogu’s mouth. 

____

Luke laughs incredulously. “I have no idea. It’s probably fine—the poisonous ones have color, right?”

____

“What? That’s—no, that’s animals, sometimes. How can you not know?”

____

“I grew up on Tatooine? We didn’t have plants like this. We had—scrub, barely.”

____

“Right. You told me that.” 

____

Luke isn’t sure he had, actually, but maybe their encounter in Mos Eisley and Aranth’s junkyard gave it away. He doesn’t know where Din grew up either, or how old he is, or—farrik, what does he know? Din loves his son, he has exceptionally loyal friends, he’s considerate—trustworthy, even, and kind, and takes his responsibilities seriously, and he is an incredible fighter. 

____

To say nothing of the way Luke’s entire body perks up when he feels Din’s attention. 

____

“Where are you from?” Luke asks, swallowing the awkwardness of the question. It’s the sort of thing he feels guilty not knowing and stupid for asking, because what did it matter, really? 

____

Din’s silence seems significant as he steps over a log. “Aq Vetina, originally. It doesn’t exist anymore. After the Mandalorians rescued me, the covert moved around some before settling on Nevarro.”

____

“Did you like Nevarro?”

____

Din scoffs. “No one likes Nevarro. Or, they didn’t used to. But no one asked questions there either, so, it was the best we could’ve hoped for.” He stops on his next step and cautions with an arm. 

____

Luke senses the speeders before they break the trees. He pulls Din into a crouch and a moment later, two scout troopers buzz past on speeders. 

____

“They’re farther out than I expected,” he whispers. 

____

“Hm,” Din says, and Luke can tell by the slow turn of his helmet that he’s taking in the forest. “Clear now.”

____

But they don’t pick up anything resembling conversation the rest of the way. Luke stops him at the top of the decline into the valley where the Temple sits and says. “I’m good from here.”

____

“Really?” Din asks and Luke wants to remind him he’d felt Grogu’s call from _Chandrila_ , but then Din might ask why he’d come all the way out here. He’s loosened up considerably since they’ve come this way, perhaps just the act of doing something—Din hasn’t struck him as the sort that waits around.

____

“Yeah. We can climb if you want a better view?” 

____

“Climb?” Din asks, and Luke can hear a smile even through the vocoder. He pulls Luke into him, his arm wrapping around Luke’s back. The same moment his jetpack ignites, Luke has the mind to grab the edge of his chest plate.

____

They’re in the canopy in only a second. Grogu squeals as they rocket upwards, his face wrinkling with laughter. They catch their footing on a wide branch that bows a little under their weight, but doesn’t do more than creak before settling. Din lets go to set a hand on the trunk and keep his balance, but he tips his head so the cool beskar of his helmet touches Luke’s forehead. 

____

Luke knows he’s blushing. He feels hot from the tops of his ears all the way to his fingers and he can’t do anything about it in a tree, while Din’s holding a baby, so Luke takes the binoculars off his belt and turns to look at the Temple. There are two Imperial Lambda classes on the landing pads and some kind of transport Luke doesn’t know the name for vomiting a cohort of the troopers just outside the blast doors. Din curses next to him. 

____

“Well,” Luke says softly. “We definitely need the Republic now.”

____

“You could take them.” Din sounds so certain, which—

____

“Destroying droids is easier than killing people,” Luke whispers. He’s grateful to have the binoculars when Din turns to him. He doesn’t want to admit how deeply it stings, being thought of as a very efficient killer, because it’s not just Din. The Republic does it too. He’s the man who blew up the Death Star—everyone thinks it and he knows it’s—even true—it’s just—he doesn’t want it to be.

____

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Din says.

____

“Alright.”

____

“Luke, I’m serious.” Din hardly needs to preface it, his voice is as firm as Luke has ever heard it. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

____

“How did you mean it?” Luke immediately hates himself.

____

Din’s quiet until Luke turns to look at him. “That you would find a way. You’re not the sort who lets anyone stop him from doing what’s right.”

____

Something uncoils in his chest at that and he huffs out a breath.”I don’t know about that.” 

____

“Can you—sense the kids?”

____

He nods, and focuses on the lower hanger. He'd felt out this way this morning, after Din had bought it up, but what he'd felt had been--odd, odder than the Temple normally is, anyway. And there were so many signatures to sort through, he thought bring here would be clearer. It is to some extent. There are distinct Force signatures that are most notable for the way they spill without boundaries, diffusing everywhere, like blood in water. If he focuses he can pick out four that he might guess are sensitives; the other three feel almost—slippery. His focus slides right off when he tries to read them. 

____

“They’re heavily sedated,” he says, and he can’t resist prodding at them further, because there is something odd about all of them. He’s not sure if it’s the suspension. He doesn’t know if he’s ever tried to read someone sedated in bacta, if he did it wasn’t notable enough to remember, which doesn’t help him now. Han certainly hadn’t felt this way encased in carbonite. 

____

They don’t feel like Grogu—bright and warm and energetic—the way he might expect them to if their Force signatures were tampered with using his blood, but they do feel—two-toned. Out of focus, definitely. Developing, maybe. There is something about the Force signatures that feels deeper, or maybe louder was the right word? 

____

“They do feel odd, but I can’t tell—I’m not sure if it’s them, or what’s been done to them.” The Temple itself has always had its own ambient relationship with the Force, and it’s always been more active full of people. The truth was—Luke hadn’t met enough Force sensitives to know. Ben had felt different from Yoda had felt different from the Emperor—there had even been a difference between Vader and his father at the end. “We’ll know once we have them out of there, I guess.” 

____

Din’s hand is heavy on his shoulder. “You’ll figure it out.” 

____

He supposes he’ll have to. “More troopers than I expected.”

____

“Two by two speeder teams, and another two by two just inside the perimeter of the trees,” Din says.

____

“Plus the guards on the blast doors.” He reaches through the Force. “There’s only one person monitoring the tanks.” A quick count has almost a hundred people on the base, though. Far more than Luke had expected. 

____

“They’re setting up shop a little too close for comfort,” Din says after a quiet moment. The activity from the Temple is muted this far out, but it still breaks the buzz of insects and calls of whisper birds.

____

He wipes sweat off his forehead and wonders how Din isn’t dying in his suit. “We can handle it,” he says, even though—he isn’t sure. 

____

Yavin 4 was the first place he ever set foot on where even the earth was Force-sensitive. The Force moved through things instead of just around them, and it felt incredible, but if he’s honest that isn’t why he’d ended up here for his school. 

____

He’d had a home here, he’d had Han and Leia and Chewie and Wedge—friends that turned into family and after the war…everyone had gone home somewhere. He’d had—a burned out homestead on Tatooine, and an X-wing that legally wasn’t even really his until Leia fixed it.

____

He has good memories of Yavin 4, which is not something he could say of really anywhere else in the galaxy. It probably wasn’t the smartest place to set up his academy—Han suggested a number of uncharted-almost-uninhabited Rim planets that haven’t been part of a pivotal moment in recent history—but Luke likes it here, he feels—felt safe here. 

____

“Hey,” Din says. Luke looks over. “We’ll take care of it.”

____

Luke pushes a smile and nods, but he has a growing certainty in his chest—growing every minute they hide here, feeling the Imperials move through the Temple complex as if they belong there—that Yavin had been a bad idea. 

____

____

\------

____

____

After a couple hours watching the complex, Luke uses the Force to levitate them out of the tree, Din and Grogu wrapped in his arms, this time. With the Force he probably doesn’t need to hold Din so close, but he likes feeling Din’s breath catch under his hands. Luke carries Grogu back to the speeder, letting Din drive back as the jungle wakes up in the dark. 

____

“They’re asleep inside,” he warns Din, as they park the speeder and pass the empty Falcon. He can sense Han and Leia in the room Grogu didn’t choose, and Luke gives them a wide berth. It’s only after he steps inside Grogu’s room, prepared to tuck him and his frog into the crib, that he realizes Ben is sleeping in Din’s bed. 

____

Din stands in the doorway, and looks at Ben’s dark head of hair peeking over the top of the sheets. Grogu stares at Ben too, and coos softly. 

____

“Looks like your cousin Ben is going to sleep with you,” Luke whispers, running a gloved finger over Grogu’s ear. “Is that okay?” He can probably get the crib out of the room and down the hall without waking anyone, if Grogu doesn’t want to stay here. Ben is still mostly a stranger to him, after all, but Grogu plops back on his butt and stares up at him with quirked ears. “Alright.” He tucks the frog under the blanket and lets Grogu fold himself into bed. 

____

Din steps back into the corridor, and Luke follows to the hiss of his helmet as Din pulls it off one-handed. For a moment, they’re both just quiet shadows until Luke lets his hand trace over a day’s worth of stubble on Din’s jaw. 

____

“You’ll spend the night with me?” Luke is torn between expecting and asking, and forces the words out before Din can say anything, because Din is the knight from a wonder tale, and the heroes of those stories don’t invite themselves into bed, not even with their husband. 

____

“I don’t have to,” Din whispers, bending over Luke, noses brushing. “If you’d rather—“

____

“I’d rather my husband slept with me,” Luke says. He bites his own smile. “After a shower.”

____

Din pulls back, his expression pulling into something like wry amusement and Luke pushes him back until they’re in his room.

____

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can have one bed, as a treat.
> 
> I'm not super happy with this chapter, but I figured I'd kept you waiting long enough. I spent way too long sleuthing Din's age, and based on the droids that attack Aq Vetina he's maybe 38-40 years old. 
> 
> I know George says there’s no underwear in space but I personally find that really uncomfortable so, I say again: canon is fake except for the parts I like. Also, the game Din gives Ben is a bastardized form of Qwirkle, which is a real game you can play with small children, like very easy dominoes’ to teach strategy and problem-solving! I don't really know why I put that in there, except that I couldn't wrap my head around Han and Leia ditching Ben for the weekend and I didn't want to just...put him in the garden the entire time. 
> 
> Din's love language is obviously gifts, mostly because I doubt he ever returned to the covert without something to give them and habits are hard to break. (That's a lot sadder now that I've typed it out than it was in my head oh no.)
> 
> I have drowned in my inbox, but I lovelovelove all your comments and kudos.


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